


The first-met stranger in the waning dusk

by Wallyallens



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: M/M, Pre-Canon, RipFic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-15
Updated: 2016-10-09
Packaged: 2018-06-08 11:46:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 57,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6853324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wallyallens/pseuds/Wallyallens
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pre 1x11, or What happened the first time Jonah and Rip met. A younger Time Master shows up to Calvert with a mission he's not sure he agrees with and meets a bounty hunter on the same case. romance ensues. When Rip goes back with his team, they learn he let the town be destroyed; how that happens reads as such - the saddest tragedy is the self-fulfilling prophecy. </p><p>Alternatively: Brokeback Calvert.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. the first-met stranger in the waning dusk

**Author's Note:**

> split into sections. MISSION ONE: FIND CILLIAN MOORE.

As a child, Rip dreamed of the Wild West. 

Conjuring images of open planes and sandy dunes, burned orange in a pale sunlight over dirt lanes and faded wooden signs that sang of homecoming, the sound of chipping piano keys striking in the background of a bar; in the imagination of a wide eyed dreamer, it was a time of great heroes and great glory. Where he grew up there was nothing but metal and technology, a land without a heart or soul. It was artificial light, artificial air, artificial smells and dreams and people.

In his imagination, the Old West alternatively was a place elevated by hoof fall and the glint of a golden badge under a long coat, where everything he thought was missing in the world came to life anew: a place that fit his ideals of heroism as well as providing a template to enact justice.  
When he finally got to go, his dreams fell asunder before his feet ever struck a dirt path.

The mission was his fourth solo one as a Time Master, but it was not the one he had hoped for. He was not there to save Calvert or even a life; his mission was to ensure one was taken. Everything in time had a price. To save a town, all it cost was for him to stand by and ensure the Stillwater Gang killed a man in 1857. All it cost was his integrity.

The mission had shattered the picture of the era in his mind even before he first trod an uneven path leading into the town, the air cracked by gunshots, a sodden smell of dirt lingering in the air. On a post bearing the name ‘Calvert’ on the outskirts of what must be the town itself, about a mile away from where he left his ship, a small cluster of buildings in an otherwise empty landscape, the only blip on a horizon of sand, he found a poster already half-blurred by the rain.

It read ‘WANTED’ in large letters above an image that could have been any man he came across, if not for a scar marking the side of his face. It warranted attention, so he pulled it free of the post and rolled it into his fist.

“Jonah Hex, ay?”

It was raining, the smell mingling with the droplets which hit against his face, drumming against the brim of his fabricated Stetson and dripping off the back, his light blue shirt turned navy by the time he reached the Saloon. Even that was not the place of merriment of his dreams – as he approached; a man was thrown out into a puddle slick with mud, the sounds of curses and drunken brawling following him out of the swinging doors.

Inside a Saloon marginally warmer than the pouring rain outside, he drank whiskey which was gasoline in a bottle in a dark corner of the bar, head down. It burned as it slid down his throat, eyes sliding across the varying patrons, comparing them against the wanted poster he lay on the bar beside him, fingers drumming absent-mindedly against the worn paper as his focus shifted around the room. Whispered conversations filled the corners, louder talk emerging the closer the person’s proximity to the bar, every few minutes the sound punctuated by a the slap of a fist meeting a jaw. 

That, at least, met his expectations of such a place.

“Haven’t seen your face before -”

Startled momentarily by the drawling voice of the barmaid leaning against the counter in front of him, alluring stance betrayed by eyes too sharp, watching him with a shark-toothed smile, Rip forced himself to look up nonchalantly. 

“That’s ‘cause I’m not from these parts, darlin’”

Accents had always been his strong point. Slipping on a new voice as created for this time as the clothes the ship provided, he fell into the lazy drawl with ease, head tilted to one side. Forcing his eyes to meet hers, he pushed an expression onto his face somewhere between a smirk and a grimace. 

She was smiling flirtatiously back, “You goin’ anywhere in particular?”

“Wherever my feet take me,” he replied. It was like the game of Cowboys he had played as a child brought to life, so he found it easy to embody the old western bravado he had idealised. “But I figure, they might take a rest here for a while. It seems like an interesting town.”

“You got a place to stay?”

He blinked up at her, “You know a place?”

She gave him details of a room to rent nearby, chatting to him aimlessly for a few minutes until she was called away by a particularly rowdy bunch of card players. It gave him a lay of the land, as he slowly drank his way through a second glass, the chill dissipating as the shirt dried on his back, keeping her in the corner of his eye as she waited the table. They seemed to be giving her a hassle, leering at her as she passed before one man grabbed her arm; she let out a gasp of pain.

The man’s friends laughed as she pulled, trying to move away, the rest of the bar’s eyes drawn to the ruckus, the uncertain peace broken. He downed the rest of his drink before he reacted, giving himself a few seconds to consider the implications acting now may have, but it was useless – it was his childhood imaginings brought to life.

Rip got to his feet suddenly, drawing the attention at all eyes at the table as he shifted enough to show the brass of the gun at his hip.

“I think you oughta leave the lady alone.”

The Ringleader let go of the barmaid’s arm, who spared in a look of grateful worry before running to stand behind the bar, out of harm’s way. He was however placed right into harm’s crosshairs, even the other patrons looking unsettled at the much larger man stood, towering over Rip. His lip turned upward on one side.

“And who’re you, stranger?”

“Captain Hunter.”

“There ain’t no captains in this town, ain’t even a Sheriff no more,” The Ringleader of the posse shook his head, his men standing slowly behind him as he looked down at Rip. Lifting a meaty hand, he poked the smaller man in the collar bone, making Rip rock back on his heels with a barely concealed grimace of frustration, going on. “So I guess that makes you nobody. I suggest you learn that pretty fast.”

Rip didn’t even think; he just punched him.

His fist connected squarely with the taller man’s jaw despite one foot having to leave the ground to reach it, sending the Ringleader reeling backwards into the table from which he had stood; it cracked as he fell through it, sending a flurry of cards into the air as the thud resounded throughout the bar. It was met with a silence. Dead air filled the bar as the fallen leader’s body drew all attention – for about three seconds, before thirty heads turned slowly to him. The six men who had been playing cards with the fallen man all had fury written in their gazes.

“Boys,” said a new man, walking towards Rip to take control of the group of men as he cracked his knuckles. “Let’s show this here stranger why he should think twice before he messes with the Stillwater Gang.”

It was then that Rip’s stomach dropped with the realisation that he _may_ have made a mistake.

The punch landing there only cemented that feeling, as did the next one, and the one after that. The remaining members of the gang swarmed him before he could even get a hit in, leaving him gasping for breath bent-double before the first blow to his face sent him to the wooden floorboards, the musk of wet wood slammed into his senses. Blood mixed with the smell after that, this time his own as the men lifted him to his feet only to knock him back down, the beating consisting of variations of the same basic movements, enough for him to grab a window of opportunity in a fuzzy world and dive at the closest man, sending them both to the floor.

Through the burning where he had been hit, Rip’s reflexes kicked in as he moved to his feet, ducking an oncoming punch and throwing his own as the second man rushed him. His knuckles cracked as they met the man’s nose, sending a sharp kick of pain through his already overloaded system; the sound of shouting became a single voice, all individual words extinguished by the din, his body ached as blood dripped from his nose and face, the smell of wood and blood mixing with the scent of alcohol and sweat which he believed had been a part of the Saloon for as long as it had been there. All of it hit him at once as he stood with raised fists, electricity crackling through his body with the overwhelming feeling that _this_ was living.

It hurt like hell and honestly left a foul taste in his mouth, although that might be his own blood. But it was something he had never felt before, the rush of a fight without orders, helping someone just because they needed it and he wanted to. 

The rush lasted long enough for him to land another dozen hits, blocking and dodging the other men by letting his feet move in motions that had been trained into him by years at the Academy. He wasn’t a rookie – he had trained for years, and worked with a partner for another six months before being given solo missions. He knew how to protect the timeline; he knew how to fight, the biology of where to land a blow and how to win. 

If the world obeyed the laws of science and logic, it would have worked. It rarely did, however, and Rip’s rigid fighting style was soon taken advantage of by the gang. Six against one was never a fight he stood much of a chance in; he tried anyway. He lost. It shouldn’t have surprised him. It took another few minutes fighting for the tide to turn against him. After that he was left on the ground, coughing wetly through blood cracked lips.

It felt like the end until a shot rang out.

A dull thud followed, as the floorboard jolted with the weight of a man falling next to Rip. His head had been against the floor as it happened, the vibrations ratting through his semi-conscious skull enough to wake him slightly, the warmth of blood against his leg situating the victim a moment later. Peeling his eyes open, he looked up to see the other men frozen, all staring at a different man, standing in the shadows across the room, the smoke drifting up from his gun marking him out as the shooter – as his saviour.

He spoke, a deep drawl which seemed to originate from his centre and grow into a boom before it reached his lips. “I think you boys should get going now. Don’t you?”

The remaining men took off, taking the unconscious man Rip had knocked through the table but leaving the one who had been shot – he guessed fatally. As they left, curses slipping from their lips and crying vengeance, the rattling of the Saloon doors sounded their exit, leaving Rip to breathe a sigh of relief. The exhale was pained, his ribs aching with the breath that left his body. A groan followed at the revelation.

“Alright partner,” the voice was closer now, still gritty, but without the threat which was heavy in his tone a minute before. Gentle hands took his arms, pulling him to his feet until his arm was slung around broad shoulders, although he was barely able to stay on his feet, slipping on the blood coating the floor as he stood. When a hand on his chest stopped him from falling, the other still half-holding him up, he got his first look at the stranger that had saved his life. “Easy.”

A long brown coat and the brim of a hat struck him first, like that of his childhood heroes. When the stranger looked up at him, the hat tilting up to reveal a face with dark hair and roguish eyes, his heart broke its thundering with adrenaline, falling silent for a moment. It took him another few to notice the scar on the other man’s face. That time, it definitely skipped a beat.

“I-” Rip tried to think of something to say but failed, mouth falling open. He was staring at the man from the wanted poster from the edge of town. The image didn’t do him credit – the man on paper looked nightmarish, however in person the dark eyes were soft, flicking over his injuries, lips drawn into a worried line. He didn’t look like a criminal, or a monster, or the villain in his childhood fantasies Rip had assumed he was: he looked like a man. “You . . .”

“Just saved your ass, you’re welcome,” he replied, lip turning into a smirk which could almost be described as relieved. Sparing a glance down at the body by their feet, a circular hole in the man’s chest pooling a circle of blood into the Saloon floor, he tightened his grip on Rip, beginning to walk them towards the door. “We need to leave before they get any ideas about coming back.”

Rip’s head was too full of cotton wool to do anything but nod dumbly. Stumbling a lot, they managed to leave the warmth of the Saloon to step back out into the rain, which had grown lighter during his time inside, like breath against his skin as they struggled down the street. At some point, Rip must have mumbled the address the barmaid gave him for a place to stay, as seemingly between blinks, he moved from the muddy streets to a staircase which moaned under each step to a dull room with a bare bed, not even a blanket on the wooden frame.

Too injured to care and on the edge of passing out, Rip fell gratefully onto the wooden palette, for most of the journey his feet had been dragging uselessly against the dirt, so the hands that had really been carrying him if he were honest steadied him until he lay flat. Dazed, Rip saw the ceiling fall in and out of focus, knowing that soon he would either be asleep or unconscious. 

Before that, he wanted to say something; with a grunt of pain he raised himself onto one elbow enough to see the stranger at the end of the bed. He knew the man’s name from the poster, or at least suspected, so wanted to make sure.

“Who are you?”

The man, who had been looking around the room as if inspecting it, turned back to him. “I’m no one.”

“So am I, if the men at the bar are to be believed,” Rip slurred back, light headed. He tried a smile, but it hurt his face too much, turning into a wince which sparked amusement in the stranger’s dark eyes. Without his notice, his voice had slipped back into his usual English accent. “But my friends call me-”

“Captain Hunter, I heard ya back there.”

"Rip. I mean, my name - I'm Rip Hunter."

The man gruffly replied, head shaking slightly, “And I’m not your friend. I just didn’t want Stillwater Gang thinking they owned that watering hole.”

“Then thank you, whoever you are,” Rip surrendered, bowing his head. “For whatever reasons - you saved my life.”

“Just . . . don’t die in your sleep, alright?” The stranger was almost smiling, one hand falling to his hip as he looked away and then down, lip on the unscarred side of his face pulling up with amusement. Shaking his head, he started for the door, pausing there before looking back over his shoulder. “You can’t fight for shit, but you can take one hell of a beating, kid.”

Then quieter, something Rip vaguely, barely heard in a dream-like haze before sleep took him, he added. 

“It’s Jonah - my name, it's Jonah Hex.”

*

Rip woke the next morning with a stabbing of pain, like a thousand needles were jabbing him where a stream of sunlight from a widow was hitting him directly in the face. With another groan, he rolled onto his side to block the light, woken further when his body became tangled from the movement, blinking down to see a long brown coat as a substitute for a blanket thrown over him. He didn’t even remember it being put there.  
Something that could almost have been a smile lit up his face, until the movement cause him to hiss in pain, finally sitting to swing his legs over the side of the bed.  
Seeing a mirror and a sink in the corner of the room, he dragged himself over to it, wincing when he saw the damage – his face was swollen, one eye a dull black while his lips stayed a bright scarlet, the bottom one split, crusted over with blood. It wasn’t pretty in the slightest. 

Picking up a rag he supposed was there for a washcloth, he soaked it in the water, which spluttered and trickled from the tap, making an awful gurgling sound like being turned on was hurting it. Once it was soaked through, he held it to his face, the coolness relieving some of the burn his bruised muscles was supplying, slowly wiping the blood from his lips and chin. Once that was done, he let damp fingers smooth down his ruffled hair – still wearing the same clothes he had arrived in, he tucked his shirt back into his trousers, assessing himself in the mirror.

He still looked like steamed shit, but at least there was no blood left now.

Heaving a weary sigh, Rip considered his options. Returning to his time ship could heal his injuries and provide a fresh set of clothes, but being healed as if by magic after receiving such a public beat down would only arouse suspicion, and he had no intention of being burned for witchcraft because he couldn’t take some bruises. From the sunlight at his window, he guessed the desert-like heat he had been told about in stories was true, so opted to tell the lady who owned the house that he would be staying for a while, meaning he may not see his ship for some time. 

It didn’t matter – he had money and a gun, there wasn’t much else essential to this era. Leaving his room with the key now in his pocket and the landlady paid off, he made his way back into the main street of town. It was further than he thought it possible for him to have made it in the state he was last night, so he hoped to bump into ‘Jonah Hex’ again. He owed the man something, even if that was just a drink and a thank you.

He had two months to wait until the Stillwater Gang to kill a man called Cillian Moore. 

That meant he was in no rush to do much of anything but get a feel for the town in the light of day. Calvert was a big town that felt like a little one: everyone seemed to know one another, calling out to their neighbours from windows and lighting up the streets with chatter, the town a lot friendlier in the morning than it had been the night before. 

It was noon by the time he had been to the tailor’s for a few new shirts and a lightweight jacket, even going as far to purchase a tan Stetson hat of his own, having lost his fabricated one the previous evening. Seeing himself in the clothes sent a tingle of excitement down his spine. The Stetson rested on his head as the sun rose and fell in the sky, returning to the room he had rented in the late evening, having seen neither Jonah or found a trace of Cillian, despite asking around for hours. 

There was a communal room for the residents, with a liquor cabinet and a fire. That was where he found himself reading a worn paper as night fell, aching feet resting on the table and hat thrown beside them, the dim light of the oil lamp overheard barely enough to read by, eyes straining to make out the words in front of him. It wasn’t helped by the fact his left eye was still swollen shut. As he scanned the words for signs of either the gang or the man, he didn’t notice a second figure enter the room until a drink was held under his nose.

“What’s this?” Rip blinked from the glass to the man holding it out and froze. His face split into a painful grin. “It’s you!”

It was Jonah Hex, same hat and a new black coat, but unmistakeable. Rip knew two things about him with absolute certainty: he was a wanted man, and he had saved his life. Somehow, Rip trusted the fugitive without doubt, without hesitation.

“You gonna take it or not?” Jonah grunted, shaking the hand with the glass in it. Although he rolled his eyes as Rip took the drink, he sat opposite him on a stool, eyes flicking over his face, commenting. “You look slightly less like shit today than you did yesterday.”

“I have you to thank for that,” Rip replied, letting a soundless laugh escape him. He had to look up at Jonah, who seemed to never take his hat off, but it didn’t obscure his face from this angle – as the other man tilted the glass so that the liquid never touched the scar that crossed his lip, Rip tilted his head to one side. “I also think it was I who owed _you_ a drink.”

“You don’t owe me nothin’.”

“That’s not true.”

“Still not your friend,” Jonah caught his eye, glaring. “Don’t go expecting me to save your life every time you go lookin’ for trouble. Which from the looks of ya, is more often than not.”

Rip pouted a little. “I don’t look like trouble.”

“You’re a stranger who turns up and starts a fight with the biggest guy in the bar right away, you don’t just _look_ like trouble – you _are_ it,” Jonah argued, guzzling down the rest of his drink and pouring another. Throughout his harsh words, however, there was a glimmer of amusement. “And how ‘bout you explain how you go from sounding like a regular fellar to being British as the empire all of a sudden?”

Rip tried not to smile and failed, shrugging innocently. “I said I was out of town.”

That almost earned him a laugh, Jonah’s face smoothing out in a way that turned weathered features carefree, eyes darting away as he shook his head without the same infliction, torn between amusement and disbelief.

He drained a second glass and stood, making to leave the room. “That you are, kid. That you are.”

“I take it you’re staying here too,” Rip said to stop him, thinking back to the way Jonah had been looking around his room the night before. It had been as if he was inspecting it, and he was there now – it made sense. He got a brisk nod in response but nothing else. “Then I guess I’ll see you around,” Rip grinned through the pain, “ _Neighbour_.”

“No you won’t!”

There was laughter in Jonah’s voice, though, and Rip sank into his seat with the warmth of accomplishment running through him.

*

Jonah ended up in the room opposite him, and Rip did everything in his power to make sure the other man knew it.

“Morning, Mr. Hex,” he waved cheerily the morning after their conversation, having left his door open to allow the breeze inside. The heat in this era really was stifling. It was worth it when he noticed the dark figure coming out of the room opposite, throwing in a cheery wave from where he sat on his bed. “Is that your room?”

Jonah stopped in his tracks with a scowl. “No.”

“Then what were you doing in there?”

“None of your damn business, that’s what,” Jonah huffed. He began to walk away, “Stop talking to me.”

Rip just grinned wider, yelling at his retreating back. “See you later!” 

He pretended not to notice the curses and muttered threats that followed, the fugitive’s voice always gruff, but coming in shades of annoyance, something he was starting to pick up on. The way his real anger bristled against the Stillwater Gang members was not matched in his annoyance towards Rip, which the Time Master took as a good sign. He owed Hex a debt; he was going to repay it whether the other man liked it or not.

It was an ongoing process.

Rip maintained a forced friendship with the other man for a week, greeting him in the mornings and evenings whilst ignoring Hex’s grumblings about his chatter point blank. He poured Hex drinks, knocked on his door as he left in the morning to wake the other man up, even took to leaving a plate of food on the floor outside his room because he had never seen Hex actually eat anything without prompting. 

It was on his first Friday in Calvert, after a week of making Hex accustomed to his presence, when he came home late to find Jonah on the doorstep of the Inn, arguing with the landlady. Although he was exhausted, sweat clinging to him like a second skin after another day wasted in the sun looking for answers, as he approached the raised voices in the dark doorway he paused, listening in.

“You can’t do this,” Jonah was saying, a desperation fuelling the edge of anger in his voice. “I paid the rent, the money’s good. You got no reason to kick me out!”

“I don’t want your sort around here anymore; you make the place look rough. I don’t want my resident’s thinking-”

Jonah scoffed, “Residents? Dorris, half the people in there are working for gangs or on the run, at least I’m just-”

“I don’t care what you are,” their landlady replied nastily. “I want you out.”

Rip finally strolled around the corner, making himself known with a tilt of his hat and the southern accent he was starting to grow quite used to, the soft sounds coming out of his lips a melody to his ears. “Sorry to interrupt-”

“Christ, not you again,” Jonah muttered under his breath.

“I know it’s not my place to say, but I sure do hope you’re not about to throw this poor fellar out into the street because of how he looks,” Rip said, putting on a disapproving face. Tutting under his breath, he leaned casually against the doorframe beside Jonah, his words spoken nicely but with a bite; the threat evident. “Because as another one of your residents – that makes me awful concerned about my own future here. I wonder how the other people here would feel if they found out you’d leave ‘em in the cold for no reason?”

The landlady, Dorris, blinked, eyes squinting at him. “Shooting your mouth like that will get you killed, boy.”

“I’ll take that chance,” Rip replied evenly, not breaking eye contact. “Give the man the keys to his room.”

She all but threw the keys at Jonah’s head, leaving with a string of curses and leaving a sour taste in their mouths. Dorris was not a kind woman, and would throw out a family into the streets as soon as someone who could pay more than they could showed up, so there was no love lost to coerce Jonah’s room out of her, however morally grey the action was. The room would only have been filled by another murderer or fugitive. Rip much preferred Jonah’s grit to any of the other resident’s bloody hands, any day of the week. 

As soon as she was gone, said man rounded on him. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

“She was in the wrong,” Rip shrugged. “There were no grounds to throw you out, it wasn’t fair.”

“It wasn’t _fair_?” Jonah echoed the words back incredulously. When Rip didn’t seem to understand why he was mocking him, Jonah scoffed, face twisting into a disbelieving smirk. “Well shit, if the world worked on what was fair and what wasn’t, people like us would be outta a business. You shouldn’t have done that, now-”

“Call us even if that makes you feel better,” Rip sighed dramatically, throwing his hands in the air. Jonah’s reluctance to accept his friendship – or anyone’s – was like an ongoing joke. He was going to see how this one played out. “You saved me, I saved you . . . from having to find someplace else. Which sounds less when I say it out loud - so maybe we’re half-even.”

Jonah pinched his nose like he was staving off a headache, “We can be even if it’ll make you leave me alone.”

“That doesn’t work for me, I’m afraid.”

“Make it work,” he snapped, shaking his keys in Rip’s direction as he began to head inside. “Stop getting involved in my business, asshole. I’m going to bed.”

“You’re welcome!”

As soon as Rip shouted, Jonah paused. For a moment, he wondered whether the other man was going to turn around and hit him, which wouldn’t be unprecedented. People punched Rip a lot; he wasn’t exactly sure why. But after the moment passed, Jonah walked away.

Rip felt himself smile. That was something.

One night a week later, his curiosity got the better of him and Rip went over to visit the other man. “Why are you wanted?” 

“What?” Jonah asked, looking up to see Rip leaning against his door. He had been fixing his boot, which was suffering from a hole in the sole. They were a damn good pair of boots, so a line of frustration had appeared on his face when the persistent idiot had showed up, so it wasn’t really Rip’s fault that he was so prickly that night. He saw the wanted poster in Rip’s hand and scowled. “What’s it to you, asshole?”

“Nothing,” Rip answered, his voice a little smug. “You just don’t seem like a criminal.”

“I’m insulted.”

“You saved me and you didn’t have to, and I know the Stillwater Gang are bad news,” the Time Master amended, moving further into the room. Jonah had stopped pretending to fix his boot and looked up by this point to see him standing with laughing eyes and hands in pockets. “I think we’re on the same side.” 

“I’m on my side, no one else’s.”

“So you are a criminal? What – you kill someone? Steal something?” Rip leaned forward conspiratorially, voice low and suggestive. “Come on, you can tell me. All us liars and outsiders together, right Mr. Hex?”

“I’m no goddamn thief, and I’m not a criminal!” Jonah barked. Throwing his boot down, he stood and grabbed the other man by the collar, eye to eye; Rip held his ground, and Jonah didn’t let the fact that he was impressed show. “What happened was nothin’ but bad business, I didn’t do anything wrong but try and make a livin’.”

A tiny, closed lip smile, victorious and gleeful, appeared on Rip’s face. “I knew it.”

“Screw you, Hunter.”

Jonah released his grip, pushing Rip back, but there was no aggression to the act. He walked a few steps away, turning his back in an exhausted move, one hand moving to rub his eyes. Triumph moving to concern, Rip felt the smile die on his face as he followed him.

“I didn’t mean to offend you, my friend.”

“I’m not your friend,” Jonah replied, turning as Rip came to a stop behind him. There was no real force behind his words.

“Not yet,” Rip replied earnestly, receiving an eye-roll in response. “What if for now, we were allies?”

“And how would that alliance work?” Jonah Hex replied, putting his hands on his hips. There was an ounce of respect instead of the usual disdain with which he looked at Rip, as if he were really considering it. “I’m a Bounty Hunter, and you? – I don’t even know what you are.” He snorted, foot tapping in a way revealing his itching to start pacing. “You talk strange, you act strange – it’s like you don’t belong, at all. So what are you exactly, Rip Hunter?”

“You’re a Bounty Hunter?” Rip deflected, clasping his hands in front of him and undercutting the tension by ploughing right through it. “Excellent. I could use your skills to find a Mr. Cillian Moore.”

“You didn’t answer- wait,” Jonah stopped mid sentence, squinting at him suspiciously. “Why do you need to find Cillian?”

“Do you know him?”

“You first,” Jonah replied, but crossed his arms determinedly this time. Shifting from foot to foot, he studied Rip with a new look now, a mixture of all his previous ones. He wasn’t going to back down.

Rip sighed. “I need to talk to him about his connection with the Stillwater Gang,” he said, and it was only half a lie. “Your turn.”

“There’s a bounty out on him. If I find him before the Stillwater Gang can kill him, I’m set for the next few years.”

Rip blinked in confusion, rubbing the back of his head. History had not mentioned this – Moore was supposed to die unopposed, a victim in a gang war. That was the way of the West. “Who put out the bounty?”

“Someone who wants Mr. Moore to live, for whatever reason; I didn’t ask,” Jonah answered. Eyes flicking over him quickly, his tongue flicked over his lips. “So if we both need to find Moore-”

“Two heads, as the saying goes, may be better than one,” Rip finished, taking a few steps closer. “What do you say, Partner?”

Jonah snorted, then pushed Rip out the door and slammed it in his face.

*

There were twelve cans lined up on a fence post. It had been four days of Jonah going out alone and claiming he needed to tie some loose ends before they got started on tracking down Moore together, but at least the other man had filled him in on all that he knew so far. It was half a partnership. When Jonah had announced they were going out that day, Rip had hoped that meant they were finally going to make some progress; he had hoped to finally become an equal in their alliance, to prove himself.

Standing in a field just outside of town at midday with nothing but cans, he was starting to doubt they would ever get around to the business at hand, feeling his nerve start to fail. Not that Jonah knew it, but time was running out. There was just over a month left until Moore’s scheduled demise. 

Rip stared down the cans with trepidation, brow turning inward.

“What are they for?”

“Practice,” Jonah replied. Finishing lining up the cans, he stood next to the fence with hands on hips and studied them for a moment before nodding to himself, seeming pleased as he turned. Taking ten measured steps away from them, he motioned for Rip to stand beside him, placing a gun in his hand a second later. “If you’re going to be my partner, I have to be sure you have my back. That means shootin’ straight and fightin’ dirty.”

“I’m not an amateur, Jonah. I didn’t agree to work with you to be _tested_ -”

“Then you should have no problem hitting those cans.”

There’s a smugness in his voice at winning the argument which makes something surge in Rip’s chest, pressing his lips together in an expression of defiance as he looked up towards the other man. Jonah was smiling dangerously. The challenge was set and lay at their feet as Rip hid his own small humour at the situation, instead cocking the gun in his hands as his eyebrows jumped up, facing the targets.

Slowly, Rip raised the gun. Squinting in the bright light to aim, he lined up the first can and fired –

The bullet was skewed by the force of the gun as it fired, the shockwave jolting his elbow as it jerked up as he pulled the trigger, bones jarred by the movement as the shot cracked the air. Lazer guns in the future were smooth. He barely had to touch the triggers to send out a sleek bolt of light, so wasn’t expecting the kick of the older gun. Smoke drifted from its end as he lowered it instantly, seeing the shot had missed and swearing loudly, changing hands with the weapon to shake out his hand, face torn by pain.

Jonah was laughing, the bastard.

“Let me try again,” Rip said. 

Rubbing his knuckles where the gun had bit into them on the kickback, he barely paused to line up the shot again, chin determinedly in the air. Despite appearances, he was trained, for years in the Academy he had learned how to fight with weapons from all eras. He knew about long swords and muskets and semi-automatics. If given one, he could dismantle and load a gun from anywhere in time - he knew how their firing mechanisms works and how fast they fired a projectile and how much damage they were likely to inflict. He wasn’t useless. 

“You don’t know how to use it,” Jonah said, but he didn’t sound smug this time. If he wasn’t so worked up from his perceived failure, Rip would have noticed the thoughtfulness in his partner’s voice. Instead, he was too busy with a head full of hot air.

“Don’t patronise me, I know how to fire a gun you-”

“I mean, you know how the gun works . . . how to load it . . . you could have written the book on firing stances and how to handle your weapon,” Jonah replied, ignoring Rip’s anger. It was almost a compliment. “But you don’t understand how it feels to fire it, you fight up here,” he tapped the side of his head, “Instead of with your gut. But sure, go ahead and finish that sentence.”

Jonah looked like a wildfire but was a still pool, calm unless rippled by the world around him. Head tilted as he looked over at Rip, eyebrows raised in a way that was challenging, but the remnant of his understanding remained. He was not angry, just aware of himself and apparently, the inside of Rip’s head. His perception was downright psychic. 

Rip sighed, “I didn’t mean-”

“I know,” Jonah cut him off. When he moved to stand beside Rip, there was almost gentleness in the way he put a hand on his shoulder, leaning close as his voice dropped to a lower tone, still holding the air of wisdom from before. “You’re holdin’ the gun perfectly – but you’re too stiff. You’re grip is too tight. If you keep your hand where it is but let your arm relax, the kick won’t throw you back so hard. _Try again_.”

The breath against Rip’s ear was distracting him, the weight of the hand on his shoulder forcing his arm to do exactly what Jonah was saying, arm falling slightly as he lined up the shot. Between the beats of his heart and the extra heat of a body behind him in the heat, he managed to become hyper-sensitive to his own body, forgetting the can and the gun. They were just tools. He was the weapon.

More in control than the last time, Rip took the shot.

The can exploded.

*

Week two of their partnership went better, if accidentally setting fire to a barn where the Stillwater Gang were gathered while eavesdropping on them counted as being ‘better’. Really, it was no one’s fault. It was a very old, very unstable barn and who could have predicted that sitting on the rafters could cause a gas-lamp hanging beneath it to fall.

“Damn it,” Jonah complained later that night, a glass in his hand already as he half-collapsed onto his bed, coughing heavily. The night hadn’t left him in the best of mood, soot-singed and with a cut on his head from when they fell. "This never would have happened if I was alone."

“Yeah, if you were alone you’d be dead,” Rip replied. It was his turn to be calm, it seemed. Soaking a rag with cold water in the corner, he walked over to where Jonah had sat; he pressed it to his head, only to feel the other man wince away, leaving the cloth there with raised hands. “Hold that down to stop the bleeding.”

“I ain’t a baby,” growled Jonah, hand going to the cloth anyway. Sourly, he drained his glass, still coughing every few seconds from the smoke on his lungs. That seemed to set him off again, looking to where Rip stood in the doorway. “What are you still doing here? Get out.”

Rip took a moment to think before he rose to the bait. From what he could see from the scar on Jonah’s face, the man had back memories with fire - it made sense of the irrationality and outbursts of anger he had been showing on the walk back. Jonah was scared. Trauma was something Rip understood, so nodded slowly.

“I’m here because you were injured and I wanted to make sure you were okay. I’ll go – but I’m just across the hall if you need me.”

Jonah didn’t knock, but was waiting for him the next morning. His outburst was hidden behind a still face again, but that fact that he waited for Rip instead of trying to sneak out alone as usual said something. He stood straight at the Time Master’s approach, handing Rip a knife. 

“To protect yourself.”

“I knew you cared.”

“I _don’t_.”

“This says otherwise,” Rip replied, grinning widely until his cheeks ached. He gave Jonah a reprieve as he gestured towards town with his head, walking off. “Come on, we’ve got work to do.”

*

In his third week as Jonah’s partner in crime, Rip found himself staring down the barrel of a gun for the . . . oh, seventh time. It’s really not a safe profession, this bounty hunting business; he didn’t know why he was even surprised by it anymore. Life with Jonah is never dull – but also never safe. 

His hands were constantly bruised and smelled of gunpower, face tanned from exposure and back aching from the long days. He didn’t think he had ever felt quite so alive.

“You don’t have to do this,” Rip said measuredly, the automatic response itching at his tongue the instant he recognised the small circle an inch away from his eyes as a gun barrel. It was second nature to him now. The thought didn’t scare him as much as it should have. “You don’t have to shoot me.”

“Yeah, I do!” 

That was the usual reply, but Rip froze at the voice this time. It was not the rough twang of a man, but the higher pitched tone of a child: a youthful defiance, not a malicious one. In its shake there was a great amount of fear, the uncertainty hidden under a forced bravado for saying it and holding a gun at all.

Eyes refocusing on the figure in front of him instead of the gun, Rip saw him – a child no more than twelve with a black eye and a mop of dark hair, gun held in hands that trembled just enough for him to worry about the child pulling the trigger by accident as well as choosing to shoot him. 

Rip kept his gaze as even as possible, hands raised to beside his head. “You don’t want to shoot me.”

“I will.”

“Son-”

“Don’t call me son,” the kid spat out. Now, there was venom – though not directed at him, not really. “I’m not – I’m not some stupid k-kid like they all think! I’m not _worthless_ like he says . . . I’ll do it, I’ll shoot you dead!”

The words hurt Rip in a way that was the same as if real bullets had torn through him. He wasn’t a father, nor did he ever have one to look up to – or much of anyone, really. But from what he knew of families, no child should ever be made to feel worthless by their own. Blinking slowly, Rip changed his voice to a gentler tone, knowing force wasn’t the way to win this one.

“I believe you,” he said, hands hovering in midair although he moved them repeatedly down a fraction, trying to subconsciously suggest that the boy lowered the weapon. “But killing me won’t make you feel better, you have to realise that. It’s not – killing, it isn’t what you expect. There’s a cost.”

“I’ll pay it,” the kid said, but he lacked conviction. In his eyes were tears, edges white with fright. “I have to, if I don’t . . . you’re snooping around! They’ll kill me if I let you go.”

“Nobody knows I’m here. Just you and me, that’s all – I’ll walk away,” half twisting towards the door to show this, Rip shrugged, “Nobody has to know.”

The kid seemed hesitant, looking from Rip to the door of the building he had been investigating. It was a known location for the Stillwater Gang to store supplies and trade information, although he had found nothing before running into this pint-sized problem. The gun dropped an inch.

“What are you doing here?”

“Looking for information, that’s all.”

“You shouldn’t be here. These people, the Stillwater Gang – they’ll kill you,” the kid said, voice wavering. “I-I’ve seen ‘em do it . . . my dad do it. If they catch you messin’ in their business you’ll be a dead man.”

Rip winced again. He changed tactics, “What’s your name?”

“W-what?”

“Your name.”

The kid shrugged again, the gun on his shoulder starting to droop, too heavy for the young boy to be holding that high for that long. “I’m no one.”

“Me too, they always told me,” Rip’s lip quirked up. “Doesn’t make it true. You get to decide who you want to be in this world – what you’re going to do. I chose this.”

“Makin’ trouble?”

“Some would call it that,” he admitted, imagining Jonah’s smirking face. “I’m just trying to make sure they can’t hurt anyone again. I could make sure your father doesn’t hurt anyone again. What’s your name?”

“Billy,” the kid finally replied, eyes skirting from Rip to the dirty floor with anxiety before returning to his face renewed with a bright anger. The gun lifted again. “Are you gonna kill my dad? Are you from a rival gang?”

“No,” Rip shook his head softly. “I’m a traveller – I could have been a criminal, like the bad men your dad works for, but I chose differently. I wanted to protect people so I became . . . a Sheriff,” he knew it was a lie, but only by halves. He was a Time Master – a sheriff of a much larger town. A thought nudged at his mind saying he was there to make sure the Gang killed Moore, so this was all a deceit of an innocent mind, yet he was beginning to doubt his orders. It didn’t feel right anymore. Pushing it aside, he looked at the child before him again, slowly raising his left hand. “You get to choose, too. Give me the gun. Don’t let them make you into something you’re not, Billy.”

A moment later, the cold weight of a gun came to rest in his palm. Rip smiled.

“Thank you,” he said, moving the gun down to his side and using his other hand to touch Billy’s head, patting a handful of wild hand in a kind gesture. The child stiffened at the touch before he realised it didn’t hurt; Rip wanted to tear his father apart. Hand moving to Billy’s shoulder, Rip looked the child in the eyes. “Now I want you to go home, this is no place for you to be. But if you ever need me, I’m at the inn in town, just past the saddler’s. Come and find me.”

There was a hesitation in the way Billy nodded before he ran off, leaving an odd sensation in Rip’s stomach, like he had just time-jumped a millennia. A sickening jolt, a deadness in his gut: he was _worried_ , and he doubted suddenly that he would ever see the child again. Rip did not like that feeling.

“Why didn’t you just grab the gun?”

“Jesus _Christ_ , Jonah!” Rip jumped three foot in the air when Jonah spoke from the shadows. Recovering quickly, he walked forwards until he could make out Jonah’s form, leaning casually against the wall, smug smirk on his face. “How long have you been there? I thought you were looking upstairs.”

“I checked,” Jonah replied with a shrug. “Nothin’ there. I got bored.”

Rip’s eyes widened incredulously, voice getting higher and more hysterical with each word, “And when you saw me being held at gunpoint?”

“You seemed alright. So?”

“So what?”

“So why didn’t you just grab the gun?” Jonah deadpanned, but there was something akin to curiosity in his next words, eyes flicking over Rip in a different way than usual. “You didn’t have to do that, I know you coulda disarmed him. Why bother?”

“Because he was just a child, and he was _scared_ ,” Rip replied earnestly. “What would you have done?”

Jonah didn’t reply, just grunted and walked past Rip towards the door. It stayed on his mind all day, though.

*

Although Jonah was already halfway down the road when Rip exited the inn where they were staying, Rip caught up to him quickly, jogging the short space between them as he hurriedly shoved his hat on. The morning sun was already beating down on his back, but the town was peaceful as he fell into step with the other man, looking twice at everyone they passed.

“So partner, what are we doing today?” Rip asked, looking over to Jonah determinedly. “Do you have any leads we can follow on Moore?”

The other man was not impressed, not even looking over at Rip as he kept walking. “I have leads to follow, yeah. You have a very busy day of staying out of my damn way.”

Rip ignored him, “So what are our leads?”

“My leads. _Mine_ ,” Jonah grumbled, but pulled a worn piece of paper out of his pocket anyway. Whispers followed them around town as they walked together, Rip’s eyes never leaving his companion. “I got a name. Might know where Moore is, might not. But its outta town.”

“Meaning?”

“We’ll have to get some transportation.”

“ _We_ ,” Rip echoed excitedly, bumping their elbows together. As Jonah glared over at him for that, the Time Master’s eyes were practically dancing with mischief, eyebrows quirking in a way that dared him to contradict him. Jonah raised a threatening finger, but stayed silent. “I knew you’d come around to my way of thinking. Wait-” he stopped dead, surprised when Jonah paused too. “What do you mean by _transportation_?”

*

They stood in front of two horses, Rip trying to hide the urge to stand behind Jonah in the presence of the animals. It wasn’t that he was afraid, not really – he had never seen a real horse before. By his time, the only animals left were ones useful to eat; domestic pets had vanished hundreds of years before he was born, animals for transportation made redundant years before that – they kept only what was sustainable and useful to survival. Horses were not on that list.

Faced with them now, he was almost speechless.

“They’re so _big_.”

“You ain’t never seen a horse before?” Jonah asked, breaking his intense concentration on the animal. 

Wide eyes blinking, Rip glanced over nervously and shrugged, trying to think of a way out of this – it had been a month since he had been reminded of how he didn’t fit in here, deciding it was better for his cover not to return to his ship unless it was absolutely necessary. He had been starting to forget; now it came crashing down on him all over again, the weight of the future.

“I . . . I came from a really small town,” he lied, tugging at his collar as he spoke and returning his gaze to the animal, not able to lie straight to the other man’s face. It sounded lame even as it left his mouth, a rise of red in his cheeks as he forced himself to move on. He pointed to the problem, “I don’t know how to ride one of these things.”

“I’ll teach ya,” Jonah replied, and Rip looked over with genuine gratitude before he saw the dark smirk on the fugitive’s face. “Lesson one: don’t fall off.”

“Yes, thank you, that’s really helpful,” Rip snarked as the other man walked away, jumping easily onto his own horse. At the words, he turned in the saddle and tipped his hat to Rip, who deadpanned, “I hate you.”

“Then why do you keep following me around?”

The smile which bloomed from a look of teasing at his own to stretch across his face, again starkly reminded Rip just how much younger Jonah looked when he smiled. Without the grim weight of the world on his brow, Jonah was a time traveller of his own making when he smiled, the tooth-showing expression brightening him back to being a boy with a gun and the entire Wild West to play with.

Rip didn’t know for sure that Jonah was like him at all, that doing this felt as natural as breathing – but from the acts of heroism he had witnessed, he suspected it.

He liked it when Jonah smiled.

The horse was coming towards him, so any notice he was paying to the other man’s smile was dashed by a pair of yellow teeth in his face, and the yelp which tore free of him. Ducking under the animal’s head, and scurrying backwards a few steps, holding out his hands and talking gently to the animal as it turned on him.

“Whoa. Whoooooah,” Rip murmured, arms held wide. The horse was looking at him now, and it was either going to charge him or well, just stand there. “Easy, fella. I’m not going to hurt you. I’m your friend, see?”

Standing at the horse’s head now, having stepped slowly forward as he spoke softly, and finally reaching out a hand to touch a velvety nose. It whickered softly at the touch, the horse blowing heavily out of its nose happily at the touch; Rip felt his own face twist at the affection. Seeing a horse for the first time had been one thing – this one seemed to actually _like_ him.

Rip was still smiling stupidly at the horse when Jonah spoke up.

“We haven’t got all day! Are you gonna get on the dumb thing or not?”

“He-” Rip started then frowned, checking that fact before pointing a finger at Jonah. “ _She_ is not a ‘dumb thing’, thank you very much. She’s beautiful.”

“You don’t know how to get on her, do you?”

Looking from his horse to his ally, Rip tried not to look guilty. He failed. “She’s _really_ big.”

“God damn it,” Jonah said, dismounting. The sun was shining behind him like something out of a fairytale as he got of his horse, a golden orb behind the curve of a hat and the hint of a bristly smile. As he walked over, his coat flapped against his legs, coming to a stop next to Rip, still trying to control his face. “I’ve never seen a grown man not know how to ride before. Are you even for real?”

The half-whispered question didn’t even seem to be aimed at a clueless Rip, who stood beside Jonah as the other man pulled the reins over the horse’s head, rubbing absent-minded circles on the animal’s neck as he stood. It was one of the small acts of kindness that kept adding up around the mystery that was Jonah Hex, and Rip noticed.

“Okay,” Jonah said, making Rip jump a little. “Come stand over here. I’ll teach you to mount, if only for the sake of this poor horse.”

Rip complied. Mounting went as well as expected; he had the height, but was not very good at balance, ending up on his back in the dirt twice before he came to rest on the horse’s back. Jonah handed him the reins, retreating to the fence of the small paddock they had bought the horses from on the edge of town, the farmer relieved to be rid of them. Jumping on top of the fence and hooking his legs under a lower bar, Jonah leaned back as Rip sat awkwardly on the animal.

“Relax!” he called over, content to sit and instruct for now. “Get your heels down, try walking ‘er in a circle to get the hang of it.”

“Like this?” Rip tugged the reins to the left a little, but the horse remained stock still in the middle of the square field. Frowning, he tried again to no avail, leaning down to whisper. “Please. Go. Please just move.”

But the horse was determined to ignore him. Rip felt a deep blush in his neck, heat rising to his face unmistakably, at the uproar of laughter from Jonah’s seat on the fence a minute later. A little hopelessly, he looked over to find the fugitive leaning back dangerously as he laughed out loud, the sound carrying over to him – Rip had never heard him laugh before.

Jonah snorted. Jonah huffed in a way that could be a laugh. But this? The sound was hitting him in waves, deep, growly laughter rising from lungs which sounded ruined, thick and uncaringly loud. It was a sound as grizzled as the man, but just its existence lightened him; it proved he could laugh, and could feel something other than vague annoyance and anger. It changed everything.

“If you’re quite done,” Rip scowled, only half-joking. It was good to know that somewhere under the layers of leather, hatred and sarcasm, that Jonah had a soul. “A little help would be appreciated. How do I get her to move?”

Jonah replied, voice still breathy with laughter, and if Rip had been paying closer attention, he would have noticed him swipe a hand under his eye to remove a tear. Jonah hadn’t laughed that hard in a long time. “Tap your heels.”

Safe to say, they had to spend another four days in that field until Rip could ride adequately enough to make the journey. Somehow, between the teasing and laughter, neither of them minded.

*

Underneath him, the horse’s walk left Rip bobbing from side to side, back aching from days getting used to riding and dust kicked up from under the animal’s hooves in his eyes. Although his hat spared him from the worst of it, the sun beat down on his back, the track ahead of him long on the journey to find Cillian Moore. Sweat clung to his sides and back, lips parched as he tried to save water for the way home, constantly being wet by a tongue darting between parted lips, swallowing dryness in the desert breeze.

Despite all of this, the grin lighting up his face was unmistakable.

“I don’t know what you’re smiling ‘bout,” Jonah grumbled from beside him, long coat flapping against the horses’ side. He wasn’t a fan of long days in the desert, and was being very vocal about it, looking over disgustedly at the dumb grin on his companion’s face. “Got a long way to go yet, boy.”

“And we’ve already come a long way,” Rip countered, determined that his mood wouldn’t be ruined. Through the hazy sunlight, he blinked over at his friend, forcing his cracked lips to smile wider. “Up is the only way to go.”

“The opposite is true,” Jonah replied. They were approaching a ridge, the horizon shimmering and shaking ahead; as they reached it, Rip understood his words – a vast valley opened out at their feet, as if a chunk of the land had been pummelled into nothing by the fist of a vengeful god. It was desolate, a shadow formed in the pit from its high, craggy walls, sparsely covered in weed like greenery.

Rip wouldn’t be surprised if a tumbleweed was to blow past them right then, it would certainly fit in with the scenery.

“We’re going down there?”

“Uh-huh.”

Although it was a dauntingly steep path ahead, cut from the rock with loose stones which were already shifting worryingly under the horses’ hooves, Rip kept a still face. As the animal shifted below him, it sent a stone toppling down the path a way, falling over its edge and falling for a long time before an echo hit from the bottom of the valley. It wasn’t exactly courage inspiring.

Swallowing heavily, throat suddenly twice as dry and palms doubly wet, Rip looked forcibly ahead. He had to do this. Somewhere at the back of his mind, he remembered something about a mission and the man, but it was vague, fuzzy, like a photograph out of focus. He knew he needed to do something, but for the last few days all that had mattered much was staying in the saddle for more than five seconds at a time, and the sound of Jonah’s laughter.

Missions . . . they were a long way away, kept at bay by the heat and sand. In the little paradise of Calvert, he was safe from them. Now, he still knew finding Moore was important, but it was because Jonah needed the other man and they were going to save him. 

He forgot the rest.

Squaring his shoulders like the old western heroes facing their enemies at dawn, he forced his gaze to the path ahead. Heartbeat steadying, brown eyes becoming focused on the point ahead he needed to get to, Rip clicked his tongue firmly and urged his horse forwards, pushing down the fear knawing at the edges of his insides and holding fast to the task at hand. 

As he pulled ahead on the path, he missed the way Jonah’s eyes never left him, expression mingled with an impressed glance he couldn’t hide. Rip went: Jonah followed.

After a few miles downwards in a tense silence, for Rip as he focused on something else and for Jonah as he remained solely focused on watching the other man with curiosity, the older cowboy broke it. Around them, the desert illusion was fractured, the shadow they had ridden into made less by their talk, like finding an oasis in an uninterrupted wasteland.

“Why are you doing this?”

“What?” Rip blinked, looking over. He had been so focused on not looking at the drop, his face was lit up with an un-composed confusion as he swung around in the saddle with the movement, almost sending himself off the path. With a yelp, he settled again, this time calmer as he glanced at Jonah, one weathered eye always on a point in the horizon. “What do you mean, my friend?”

Jonah didn’t even bother to argue the last point anymore.

“It’s not an easy life, this one,” he said, not disguising the interest in his words. “I know why I do it – s’the only thing I was ever any good at, fighting and movin’ around. What are you fightin’ for, Rip Hunter?”

Rip thought about how to answer that for a few minutes. It left him distracted as the slope got less and less, the sun still striking them down to dust. Eventually, he decided to answer as honestly as he could, shrugging earnestly before meeting the other man’s eye.

“I grew up hearing stories about heroes. I . . . wanted to do something with my life, I guess. To be one of the men history remembered, not one it forgot,” he said, flush creeping up his cheeks. Fiddling with the reins between his fingers, he shrugged again. “I wanted to live. To see . . . wonders.”

“You call this wonderful?” Jonah asked roughly, gesturing at the desolate landscape around them.

“Yes, I do,” Rip replied. Taking in the broken rocks worn down by sand, the occasional yellow flower bursting out amongst them, desperate to see the sun and fighting its way through sand and stone to flourish, a small smile grew on his face. “It might not be much, but it’s enough. There are people who are happy, others who aren’t; some who fight and die and bleed, Mr. Hex. But they’re alive.”

Jonah was squinting over, “You’re a strange fellar, you know that?”

“You’ve said,” Rip smirked, “Several times.”

“Well, you are.” Jonah hid a smile at the laugh that prompted, but something still nudged at his mind saying that what Rip had said wasn’t the whole story. “So you could have a hero complex anywhere. Why here?”

“It’s where my job took me.”

“And what’s your job?”

“Helping people, wherever they need it,” Rip replied, ignoring Jonah’s loud snort at the sentiment. He rolled his eyes, needing to explain. “Where I come from, there’s nothing like this. People are alive, but no one really lives, they just survive. I want to live for something. Here,” he half pointed around them, “In this scorching, truly awful smudge of a town, at least I’m needed.”

Jonah was laughing at that, but pushed on. “Don’t you have a woman for that? To live for?”

“I used to,” Rip said, laughing without humour, the sound choking up from his stomach and erupting from his throat. He wasn’t looking at Jonah at all now. “Miranda. We were . . . together. And then we got separated by my work. She isn’t – couldn’t – come with me. I loved her,” Rip’s voice cracked on the word ‘love’, but he disguised it as a cough. “It wouldn’t have been fair to ask her to wait for me, back home. I didn’t know when or even if I would ever return . . . I told her to live, instead. To move on.”

Although quiet for a few minutes, Jonah couldn’t help the questions that kept tumbling out. “And did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Move on.”

“Oh,” Rip sighed quietly. “It’s . . . complicated? I know how that sounds! It’s just, moving around the way I do - time is strange. It feels like forever ago, but it’s been . . .” Rip trailed off, thinking hard. Jonah could tell by the look on his face –when he thought hard, his eyebrows scrunched in at the middle and his eyes wandered from spot to spot, as if he expected an answer to suddenly appear. “A year, I think. About that.”

“That’s not so long,” Jonah chuckled dryly. “I’ve been wanderin’ about this state alone longer than that. A year is nothing, kid.”

“It doesn’t feel like nothing,” he replied quietly, turning his head towards the distant sun. “It feels like a lifetime. It’s not . . . I love Miranda, and I do miss her, but I know I did the right thing. It doesn’t hurt anymore. It’s just . . .”

“Lonely,” Jonah supplied, and this time it was him who wasn’t looking over at Rip’s sharply turned gaze. “Big desert, big world, one man job. The word you’re lookin’ for is lonely.”

Half hidden by the shadow of his hat and never that expressive anyway, apart from the rare – and hard earned – smiles, Jonah said a lot without having to really say it as Rip looked over. It wasn’t so much anything in particular; if a person didn’t know Jonah, they wouldn’t have guessed anything was wrong – but his jaw clenched almost invisibly, a muscle in his unscarred cheek twitching. Then there were his eyes. Usually glaring at Rip, now they fixed themselves ahead, not looking in a way that made it obvious he was uncomfortable.

Rip felt his own turn downwards as he hummed in reply, turning back to the road ahead. 

He knew Jonah didn’t like being stared at, used to strangers doing so because of the scar on his face, so he tried his best not to – sometimes, though, he couldn’t help himself. Rip started watching the other man, learning his mannerisms and the way what looked like stillness could say so much, positively drinking the other man in. An oasis in a desert. A walking contradiction of a man. A hero in a land screaming to be saved.

Jonah Hex fascinated him, stirring feelings in his gut that hadn’t made themselves known in a long time. It was like all this time with the Time Master was just . . . _prologue_. Like he was just now waking up. 

Tearing his eyes to the horizon, constantly feeling the corners gravitate back towards the man beside him, Rip mentally shook himself; he had a mission. He was not here for Jonah Hex. He had to stop looking, stop wasting time trying to impress the other man, stop noticing every damn thing about him. Time wasn’t on his side, not that it ever was. Rip knew he had a finite amount of time in this era, an inarguable fact, a full stop in the sentence he was living. 

It was ending even as it happened. Despite the facts slamming into his brain, the heat distracted him, and Jonah started talking again, and his gut tugged him back towards him, and it all got distant again. 

Rip looked back.

*

They got to Cillian Moore’s house, if it could be called that, when the sun was half-buried in the ridge of the valley, turning everything a burnt orange. A shack might be a more accurate description, Rip thought – it was a wooden building, weathered by sandstorms and rain, the wood turned grey and creaking in the breeze. He expected a particularly strong gust of wind might just blow it down.

“Better hope the big bad wolf doesn’t come knocking,” Rip joked as he dismounted outside, looking at the building with a sense of apprehension, although he couldn’t quite place why he felt it.

“What?”

At Jonah’s judgemental and confused expression, he waved a hand in dismissal. “Nothing. Doesn’t matter.”

Although he caught half a mutter about him being strange again, the rest of Jonah’s mumbling was cut off by a loud gunshot, the dirt at their feet sent aflutter as the bullet hit, leaving the both of them scurrying for cover. Hitting the ground behind a sandbank a few feet back, Rip felt Jonah’s body press against his own, slightly leaning into him as he pulled his gun, rolling onto his stomach to take aim. Rip stayed on his back, but tilted his head until he could see a figure standing in the shack’s door, shotgun waving about angrily.

“Jesus, I never saw him coming,” Jonah hissed, resting his gun on the sand to aim. He glanced over with concern. “You hit?”

“No, I’m fine,” Rip replied, adding sarcastically. “I take it that’s Moore. I wonder why anyone would want such a positively charming man dead.”

That earned him a smirk, Jonah’s lip tugging up despite the situation. His dark eyes smiled with what could have been adrenaline, but Rip counted as mischief. Here, he was in his element. “Let’s ask him.”

Before he can even open his mouth, Jonah has let off a shot towards the shack, using the distraction to dash across the space, quick as a whip when he wanted to be. Leaping over the porch, coat flying behind him like a cape, Jonah had yanked the shotgun out of Moore’s hands before the other man even realised what was happen, tossing it back out towards the spooked horses - it landed with a dull thud not far from Rip, who was still lying on the ground. Trying to control his face and not smile, he ran over to where Jonah was now standing in front of Moore, face like thunder, forcing himself to remain aloof.

“Thanks for clueing me in, partner.”

Jonah rolled his eyes subtle, keeping his focus on Moore. “Got the job done, didn’t I?”

Huffing, not able to argue with that, Rip stood beside him, looking the third man up and down. “This Moore?”

“What’s it to you?” the man finally broke his indignant silence, leering in Rip’s direction. He had to be almost sixty, with grey hair that petered out at the top, clothes dirty and old. The fight he had put up with the shotgun still burned brightly without it, sharp blue eyes daring them to make the first move as he stood in the doorway still, facing two stronger strangers on his porch. Rip had to respect that.

“Yup,” Jonah nodded, “That’s him.”

“And who the heck are you?”

“I’m Hex,” Jonah replied coolly, putting his gun away. Shoving his hands into his long coat pockets, he shrugged at the old man casually, although Rip noticed the edge of a smile in his tone as he continued. “He’s Hunter. Pleasure to make your acquaintance, bullets aside.”

Moore blew air out of his mouth, aging ten years in ten seconds as the fight in his eyes died. He crossed his arms. “I suppose you’re here to kill me, then.”

Rip and Jonah shared a quick look, the former asking, “Why would we be here to kill you, sir?”

“The Stillwater Gang has wanted me dead for over a decade, boy. ‘Bout time they finally got around to finishing the job,” Moore replied, turning and walking back into the house. If he thought they were there to kill him, it wasn’t a fact that seemed to bother him at all – he sat in an armchair in the corner, looking at them both steadily. “Sit, the two of you. Or do you want to deny a man his last drink?”

As he pulled out a glass and bottle of whiskey, Jonah sent Rip a look that told him to play along, leaning against a cabinet as Rip took a stool that was lying on its side, turning it right-side up and sitting a few feet away. Perching easily with his height, he turned his attention back to Mr. Moore, who was looking at them with humour, not fear.

“What? Did you boys draw the short straw and get the boring job of killing me?” When they didn’t answer, Moore laughed bitterly, taking a drink. He gestured around his shack, “What? It’s not enough to destroy my life, run me out of the Sheriff’s office – out of town – you have to kill me too?” He snorted miserably, “Not that its much of a life, out here on my own. You’ll be doing me a favour.”

Rip blinked interestedly, “You were the Sheriff?”

“Years ago, before Stillwater showed up . . . they didn’t even care enough to fill you in, huh?”

“Somethin’ like that,” Jonah said before Rip could talk, watching Moore as calmly as the old man was watching them. “I take it you stood up to them, tried to stand your ground?” 

“Something like that,” Moore echoed, tilting his head and emptying his glass. The level of disdain he was showing them was growing with each sip of the amber liquid, enough to act sarcastically towards Jonah now. “They didn’t take to it very kindly when I told ‘em they can’t just go around killing whoever they like. Some people are funny like that - but you’d know. You’re one of ‘em.”

“We’re not with the Stillwater Gang,” Jonah finally revealed, looking straight at Moore. There was no hesitation, no lie in his voice, and the old man sat up instantly. “I’m a bounty hunter, I was sent to find you.”

“By who?”

“Some fellar,” he replied vaguely, shrugging. “Paid me half upfront to find you, I didn’t ask many questions.”

“Shit,” Moore cursed, jumping to his feet and moving hurriedly to the window. He glanced out, turning back to them angrily as Rip got to his feet. “You goddamn fool of a boy! I’ve been hidin’ out here so long without them finding me; you’ve led them right here! Are you so stupid you can’t tell a con when it hits ya in the face?”

“I’m no fool,” Jonah shouted back, crossing the room until Rip grabbed him arm. He turned, leaning towards him, face dark. “Let go, Hunter.”

“Think, my friend,” Rip replied, trying not to let his eyes flick across Jonah’s face when the other man stood this close, the brims of their hats brushing together. “Please.”

With an angry flash in his eyes, Jonah’s jaw clenched and unclenched, but after a few seconds under Rip’s pleading gaze, he sucked in a breath between gritted teeth. In a moment, Jonah had stepped away, diffused for now. He faced Moore, still annoyed, but less of a grenade with the pin pulled than he had been half a minute ago.

“We’re not trying to get you killed, and I’m not working with the Stillwater Gang.”

“Oh yeah,” Moore growled, “Then explain this.”

He pulled the net curtain covering his window aside, revealing a line of riders coming towards them on horseback, at this distance just smudges on the wasteland. There had to be five or six men. Without knowing if they were armed or how heavily, with only the pathetic shack in the entire valley so nowhere to hide, it left them all at a distinct disadvantage. 

“Shit,” Jonah cursed, storming over to the window to look out. A second later, he screamed in frustration, punching the wall – which his hand flew through, the wood crumbling under pressure. That just set him off cursing again.

“Yeah, _shit_ ,” Moore complained, “You’ve killed us all.”

“We’re not dead yet,” Rip said, the calmest of the group. Staying still as Jonah had moved, he had begun to look around the shack as they panicked, wasting their energy on anger. He however spent the time cataloguing everything that could be potentially useful, turning to Moore. “How many weapons do you have?”

“My shotgun. Which you threw outside.”

At the older man’s sarcasm, Rip rolled his eyes, quickly moving towards the door. “Yes, do keep being difficult, Mr. Moore. It’s really helping.”

As he reached out for the door handle to leave, a hand on his arm halted him this time. He looked up to see Jonah, mouth pinched together tightly. “Where are you going?”

“We need the shotgun.”

“Yeah, we also need you alive, asshole,” he replied. At this point, ‘asshole’ was becoming a term of endearment, but right then it made Rip more determined, not softer. Jonah was close again, hissing, “Going out there is suicide! You’ll be an easy target, there’s no cover out there.”

“Then cover me,” Rip replied, hearing Jonah’s frustrated groan as he shrugged off the grip, out of the door in a second. On the porch, the riders were looking even closer, horses and faces distinguishing themselves from silhouettes against the yellow. They were close enough to hear – at the same time, he heard the click of Jonah’s gun at the door, watching his back; Rip felt a mad, impulsive feeling rise up as he ran towards the fallen shotgun. He had guessed the other man would have his back, and tried not to feel smug about being right.

The metal pressed into his palm a second later as he grabbed the shotgun, sand sliding through his fingertips as he stood again – the shot that flew past as he did only just missing his head. 

Looking up, he saw Jonah framed in the doorway now, taking aim at something behind him. A glance behind showed him the riders were almost on them now, able to see the sand scattered from the horses hooves, the glint of metal guns in the air. Trusting Jonah not to miss, Rip began to run back towards the shack, the bullets whizzing past his head going above his notice – safe on the porch, he tossed the gun to Moore, the three of them turning to make their stand right there.

It was like something out of his dreams, except in reality, it wasn’t the sun-soaked tale of heroism Rip had imagined. In fact, he was just aching and scared down to his bones. Despite that, his back was straight as he stood between the two men, feeling the heat of Jonah beside him as the riders came within shooting distance. 

Rip knew this was it – the moment he had to make a choice. It slammed into him in a tidal wave, memories and the tangled wires of the past few weeks pulling suddenly taunt with realisation: his mission was to let this happen. He had come to this time period to ensure Mr. Moore’s death; he knew that the old man was supposed to die, that the Stillwater Gang was supposed to do it, and that his job was to stand by and let it happen.

Rip had sand underneath his fingernails, biting into his skin. The wind had chapped his skin raw, the pain of learning to ride a horse leaving his legs blue with bruises, ribs aching – he had fought and bled to get to this moment. He had lived in Calvert long enough to see that it needed a Sheriff to protect the town against the Stillwater Gang, and that Moore didn’t deserve to die for trying to do it. It couldn’t change the timeline enough to matter if an old man died in the heat or lived out his life in safe exile. Yet that was his mission – to make sure he died.

After everything, seeing the way the Gang ruled the city unjustly and hearing the old man’s tale – who had done no wrong but to stand up against them – it was wrong. In what world was letting Moore die here the right thing to do? How could the Time Masters want this to happen?

The only answer: it _wasn’t_.

“Hell of a place for it,” Jonah commented from next to him. It broke Rip from his racing thoughts, pulling his gaze.

“For what?”

“To die,” he replied. There was half a smile on his face when he looked over, clicking the safety on his gun before holding his arm out. “Glad you’re here though, Rip. Not that – I mean – I’m glad I ain’t dying alone.”

At the mix of his words, he had become flustered, backtracking and stumbling his way through the sentence. Rip watched with that feeling in his gut again, the kick; that was all it took to cement his decision. The tangled lines, instead of being pulled taunt, were suddenly cut – he was free.

And he was not letting this happen.

“We are not dying here,” Rip replied. Infectiously grinning, he pulled a second gun from his boot – a blaster from his era, lighting up blue in a way that make Jonah’s eyes widen in shock. “I’ll explain later, this time I promise,” he said, motioning to Jonah to cover him again. Running back into the house, he grabbed a second bottle of whiskey and anything else which looked flammable, returning to the porch under a hail of bullets. Jonah caught this and grinned back, but Rip just handed him the future blaster in answer. “What? You’re a better shot.”

“That I am,” Jonah agreed, “But with this?”

He shook the gun as if it were foreign to him, which was fair. Rip just grinned wider. “Are you telling me you can’t figure it out, Mr. Hex? A gun is a gun, after all.”

“Asshole.”

“Just pull the trigger – and try not to miss.”

Hearing half of a laugh in reply, Rip stood with a bottle in hand before throwing it as far as he could, towards the oncoming riders. It landed in front of them, hit by a beam from the blaster a second later – erupting into flames. It exploded, taking out two men on horses. Although Moore made a noise of surprise at the blaster, it was Jonah’s exhilarated sigh at the power of the weapon which made his chest soar, heart hammering so hard he wondered if it would burst free of its ribcage. 

Whooping in victory, he threw a second bottle, and a third, and a fourth. Jonah hit them all first time, and soon there were only four men still conscious, all now on foot running towards then, their bullets seeming futile against the blaster beams. Rip had even forgotten to be scared – until he was hit in the chest.

He went down, hard. The next few moments were a blur, as a jolt of pain wracked his ribs, leaving him gasping on the floor, hands desperately moving to the wound – and coming up empty. There was no blood, no warmth – finally, he sat up, the bullet falling from the folds of his coat to the floor. Incidentally, it was the brown coat Jonah had lent him the first time they had met, the button blown to bits by the bullet: it had saved his life. 

Slowly, he got to his feet, at first confused by the lack of noise. His ears had hummed with the shot, but even as he stood, staggering towards the door in a haze, the sound of shooting had fallen silent. The floorboards creaked loudly as he stepped back onto the porch; on his left, Moore was on the floor, panting from the effort of the fight but alive. 

It was what lay ahead that worried him. 

Jonah was fighting the last standing guy, although it wasn’t a fair fight – he had the man by his collar, repeatedly punching the gang member in the face, knuckles dripping blood onto the sand. All the while, he was screaming. The sound was hallow and raw, from the back of his throat, cracking through the valley louder than any gun shot. 

“Jonah,” Rip breathed, setting off at a run towards him. “Jonah! You’re going to kill him - _Jonah_!”

He caught the man’s fist midair, dragging him away a few paces as the man he had been beating fell to the floor, but Rip barely noticed any of this, focusing on his friend. Jonah was breathing heavily, staring widely at Rip, eyes flying across every inch of him in seconds, mouth opening to form words that never passed his lips in disbelief.

“I-”

Rip probably should have expected the punch, really. Jonah’s fist connected with his jaw after the moment of shock, striking the flesh with a loud slap and sending him back a pace, hand flying to his face. 

“Ow!” he cursed, “Fuck, Jonah, what was that for?”

“I thought you were dead! I saw you get hit . . . I saw you go down,” Jonah said, voice falling louder and quiet again, almost soft as he thought back. His eyes were still fixed on Rip as if the rest of the world didn’t exist. “I thought you were . . .”

He had stepped closer; seeing the punch had come from a place of caring, Rip held up the dented and cracked button that had saved his life, lip twitching up. “Your coat saved my life. Some would call it a miracle.”

“Ain’t it just that,” Jonah breathed. The look on his face was a mixture of relief and something Rip didn’t have time to place before the bounty hunter moved, stepping towards him determinedly and grabbing him by the collar, pitching Rip towards him and –

_Oh_.

Jonah was kissing him, and everything fell into place. Gentle and pulling at the same time, as if he were desperate to get closer, to pull them together until they were one, Jonah kept a fistful of Rip’s coat as the Time Master’s eyes fell shut, hand that had been raised warily falling to the other man’s shoulder. Jonah’s lips were soft, and tasted like relief, and his own curled upwards as it was happening, wanting to smile even then. 

For just a second, just for them, the world stood still.


	2. yet ease is cause of wonder

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mission Two: stop the Stillwater Gang

“So,” Jonah said hours later, as they walked into Rip’s room at the inn. It was the middle of the night by the time they had returned to Calvert, which suited them both well – it gave them the cover of darkness to get Moore enough money and a horse to get out of town, safe once and for all from the Stillwater Gang, and it also gave them at least that night to prepare before the gang discovered their men dead in the valley. Now, in the dimness of the room, Jonah finally had the chance to face Rip with a hesitant gaze. “You’re _really_ not from around here, huh?”

With a silent sigh of exhaustion, Rip swayed his head in gesture, motioning for Jonah to sit beside him on the bed. He motioned that he would rather stand and Rip shrugged, removing his hat and throwing it onto the desk. It was late; they were both exhausted and weary and could barely keep their heads up, but Rip knew he finally had to keep his promise.

“Jonah, I have something to tell you.” A self-deprecating smile graced Rip’s lips as he tilted his head to one side, eyes briefly closing. They fixed back on Jonah, steady and unwavering; honest in the flickering of the gas lamp’s light. “I’m from the future.”

A laugh split the room. Jonah laughed loudly, head tilting back as his gut moved with the sound, shaking as he glanced back at Rip, laughter slowly petering out at the sober honesty on Rip’s face. It had stayed still as he laughed, betraying a fear in shining eyes that left his blood running cold, freezing in an instant. If it were a joke, Rip wouldn’t look that way. It left one option.

“ _Shit_ ,” he murmured.

Knee’s suddenly going weak, he practically fell down next to Rip, sitting heavily on the bed, a dull sound accompanying him. Hands on his knees, he stared dead ahead for a minute, trying to process it all – Rip was from the _future_. He had made a game of imagining possibilities whenever they were together, but had never imagined this. Hell, Jonah’s favourite possibility to smile at was that Rip had fallen from the stars themselves, from space; even that was more plausible than the truth. Now, instead of a joking game where he was the only player so couldn’t lose, the world seemed to fall from his feet, stomach lurching as if he was still falling from a great height.

He didn’t think he would be stopping for a while.

Joking, imagining, playing about Rip being this impossible man, someone celestial, this being of his own design – it had been without consequence. It was an excuse just to look at the other man a moment too long, something to distract himself from the way Rip’s smile made the dark spots in town seem brighter, or the way he moved his hands when he got excited, or – well, everything about him.

Jonah’s game was a distance between them; it was supposed to stop him from falling in love. He had failed in that respect.

Now, breathing heavily as the weight of an incomprehensible truth crushed him, Jonah knew this had to end. A joke about how Rip could have fallen from space or had a secret past with another gang or was a traveller of the world was one thing – for him to be from the future, for that to be true – that had after effects. It had _consequences_ , ones he needed to face.

“What does that mean?” he asked, finally lifting his head to take in Rip.

The other man was sitting on the edge of the bed now, hands clutching at his sleeves the way they did when he was nervous, eyes flicking wildly when Jonah looked over; he knew Rip was trying to gauge his reaction. He was _scared_.

“I know it must be hard to believe, but it means I _am_ from the future, I-”

“That’s not what I meant,” Jonah cut in quickly with a small shake of his head. The truthfulness of Rip’s statement, he never doubted. “What does that mean for . . . whatever this is? For right here and now?” To his surprise, Rip’s fear doubled, whites of his eyes showing as his mouth gaped - it struck Jonah then that today might just have been a moment of weakness, a thing done in relief. That Rip might regret what had happened between them. Wincing, he stood quickly, moving away and hastily adding, “I mean, the mission with Moore – what was that really? Why are you here?”

Defensive now, Jonah crossed his arms, looking down at a sitting Rip. The distance put between them cleared his head. It didn’t seem to do anything for Rip’s, however, as it took him another few seconds to splutter out words.

“I-I work for these people, I’m a Time Master-”

Jonah scoffed incredulously, “A _Time Master_?”

“ _Yes_. That’s – we – we protect the timeline from threats, make sure history happens as it’s supposed to,” Rip stumbled his way through the explanation, making a face at how it sounded. To him, the Time Masters were just a way of life, an accepted part of the world, a necessary force. Until Miranda, he had never doubted his faith in them. But now was not the time to think of her, so he blinked back up a Jonah, trying to phrase it all right. “I was sent here on a mission to find Mr. Moore, in a way . . .”

Noticing his hesitation, Jonah seized it, squinting at him suspiciously. “In a way?”

“I-” Rip paused. He didn’t want to say it, to admit the awful thing he almost did – would have done, in any other place and time. Shamefully, he felt his eyes mist, the words causing him pain. “I was supposed to ensure Mr. Moore died at the right time, by the hands of the Stillwater Gang. I was ordered to let him die.”

Something in Jonah’s face changed then. Like a shadow that had been hanging over it passed, he relaxed, crossed arms falling to his side as his expression cleared. The anger lines pinching his nose fell slack, becoming still, thoughtful. He was listening, eyes never leaving the other man.

“And why didn’t you?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Rip answered, “Because of you.”

“I . . . I don’t understand. Why would a nobody bounty hunter change your mind?”

“You’re far more than that, Jonah,” he said softly. Rip stood, closing the distance between them again. Although he didn’t move to touch Jonah, he stood with their faces close, close enough for Jonah to see the honestly, the certainty in his eyes. “I came to this era with a mission and nothing else . . . I had forgotten that these were real people, not just statistics or hypothetical scenarios. I’d forgotten _why_ I wanted to be a Time Master – to protect people. Then you saved me when you didn’t have to, and I saw this town about to collapse on itself, I heard Moore’s story; I couldn’t follow my mission because my mission was _wrong_. It wasn’t the right thing to do.”

“I’m no hero, kid.”

“You saved me,” Rip said instantly, not giving him an inch for self-doubt. Looking up slightly at Jonah, one of those stupid smiles stretched out across his face, growing with a breath, a flash. “And I don’t just mean by stopping me from getting beaten to death. You showed me how to care again, too. How to _feel_.”

There was still something unsettled in Jonah’s gut, looking away from the piercing eyes a few inches away from his own. “Now that Moore’s still alive . . .”

“I’ll face consequences, yes,” Rip said, for a moment worry flickering behind his eyes. Then he looked determinedly back, “But I still know that I did the right thing. And, well . . . I’m in no rush to go back to them. It feels good to be a hero.” Then just to make sure Jonah was absolutely was getting the hint, he added with a nervous smile. “Here. With you.”

Jonah was looking at him again, biting his lip. At those last words, the hesitation faded, Rip saw it disappear from his eyes in a moment. He didn’t see the scar, it was just a part of Jonah, something he had grown used to, but now all he cared about were those bright eyes. Jonah was beautiful.

Feeling lips on his own again, Rip closed his eyes to that sight. With an urgency that wasn’t there before, Jonah deepened the kiss as they stumbled back towards the bed.

*

“Tell me about the future.”

Hands behind his head, lying comfortably stretched out on the bed, Jonah asked the question as sunlight hit his face, lazily smiling up at Rip. Although he was as calm as he had been in a long time, not remembering when last he could just lie and be at peace, Rip didn’t seem to be the same; he was pacing around the small room like a caged lion, hovering at the window. They had decided to lie low for a few days, for when the Stillwater Gang inevitably showed up looking for those responsible for the deaths of their men, out of sight and mind.

That left them in close quarters with only each other’s company, something Jonah was content with from his reclining position, but Rip felt on edge, a livewire through his skull. His mind was buzzing in the aftermath of disobeying the Time Masters, still on an adrenaline rush, high from his actions. It left him jumpy as he paced, stilled only when Jonah spoke.

“I . . . I don’t know what to say. To me, it’s just home.”

“Tell me anyway,” Jonah asked, voice gentle. He leaned backwards into the lip pillow, smile twisting his lips as he gestured for Rip to join him. “Home for me is here, because I’ve never been anywhere else. You’ve been to both, maybe more – tell me how they compare.”

“ . . . the future isn’t this warm,” Rip eventually settled on saying. Slowly, he walked over to the bed, sitting with his back against the headrest, Jonah at his side. Jitters dispelled, he began to think aloud to distract himself, “I had never been to a place like this before I came to Calvert, I didn’t know a place could be this hot. The desert, the sands, even the _air_ is humid . . . in the future it’s cold, or,” he tilted his head in admission, “It was in London where I grew up.”

“London?”

“I grew up there, in the city. Everything was steel, glass, these huge structures – they made it cold, too. Not like here, with the odd buildings and odder people, the way it all just fits together. It didn’t have a heart the way Calvert does.”

Jonah snorted, “You think this watering hole of a town has a heart?”

“It wouldn’t be the only thing around here that looks a little rough, but scratch the surface and there’s nothing but beauty,” Rip replied smoothly, looking down in time to see Jonah’s face snap up at that, both of them breaking into laughter a moment later, Rip sinking down into the bed in beams of sunlight and warm arms.

Things changed then, but mostly they stayed the same. With Moore gone, the Stillwater Gang came looking for the people responsible for killing their men, flooding into town as if a dam had broken. Rip and Jonah stayed, knowing there was no evidence to link them to the deaths as well as knowing the town was not safe anymore with the gang’s heavy presence there, and that was on them.

They spent their days on back streets and in saloons, listening in to the gossip and trying to figure out the gang’s next move, planning ways they could take them out. Destroying the Stillwater Gang forever was impossible, Rip knew it would have too big an effect on the timeline – but he could save this town. That’s all he was asking.

For him and Jonah, it was like it was before; he followed the other man around with an optimistic kick in his gut singing that things would work out, and Jonah would act stoic and untouchable. If Rip worked for it, he would earn a smile. They came more frequently now. Easily, Jonah would smile and stop him from cracking jokes with a kiss instead of just rolling his eyes.

After a month, they stopped renting two rooms. It seemed like a waste of money when one lay empty every night, collecting dust. That time passed in what seemed like a heartbeat - Rip began to count it through the important moments, the conversations that stayed with him, the smiles shared.

The second time Jonah asked, it was a week later and they were hiding in a barn on the edge of town. Panting, the words slipped out of his mouth in a breath as they stopped running, footsteps muffled by straw as they stood in the shadows, desperately listening to check if they were still being followed. It had been a close call, with a member of the gang noticing them listening in on a conversation at the Saloon, gunshots at their heels as they made a decidedly hasty retreat.

It was in this respite from the chase, finally hiding, that they had a chance to talk.

“Tell me about the future.”

“This isn’t the time,” Rip replied, scaling the ladder of the barn, moving to a gap between the planks of wood to peer outside, hearing Jonah follow him. The heat that joined his side as a body stood beside him a second later and the breath at his ear just confirmed it.

“C’mon, Rip. We’re going to be hiding a while,” he replied, tugging the other man away from the window to sit behind a bale of hay, hidden for now. At Rip’s face, Jonah just griped, “I’m no amateur. If someone comes, we’ll hear them. We’re safe.”

“For now.”

“Ain’t that enough?”

Rip sighed in a frustrated manner, but sat beside him all the same. In the dim light, he managed to hide the way his hands were shaking, “In the future, there’s still fighting, still war like this. If one thing doesn’t change with time, it’s humanity’s bloody perseverance to hurt one another.”

Jonah laughed teasingly, “I’m supposed to the bitter one, you know? Steady on with that talk.”

“It’s true,” Rip argued crossly, “There’s only a need for Time Masters because now that we can travel through time, people would use that – that _gift_ , to go back and hurt and conquer all over again, as if there haven’t been enough wars already. In this era, gangs shoot each other – in a hundred years time, gangs will still shoot one another. It’s _exhausting_. It doesn’t end.”

“Hey, hey now.” Rip was cut off from his rant, fists clenching on his knees, by a hand covering the nearest one, a commanding but soft voice cutting through the air. Jonah had been watching him carefully, with interest and then with worry. The franticness he saw about Rip now did not suit the other man, striking him as being wrong and out of place. “I’m not saying this world’s a paradise, not by a long shot – but for every gang there are also just people, tryin’ to do the best they can. Good people – like you.”

Sighing, the tension leaving Rip’s shoulders slowly as he looked over, hand relaxing to hold his instead of clenching with anger, he blinked up. The tiredness was still there, dark circles marking his face and hazel eyes older than his age, but the hope that had first attracted him to Rip still remained, too.

“What if it’s not enough?” he asked, slowly. “I mean, look at us – if people found out-”

“They’re not the most tolerant bunch, no,” Jonah agreed, jaw tightening. It was something that he had given a little thought to over the past few days, what would happen if he and Rip were discovered; between them, he decided, they were more than enough to break out of jail and skip town, to go somewhere new and be together again. “Because they don’t know any better – I’m not excusing it, I’m jus’ saying. What I hope for the future is a change in that.”

“There is, a little – as time goes on, some places change, others . . . remain ignorant. By my time, for the most part, people love regardless of gender or race or class; at the edge of the world, all that remained was each other. People loved deeply, then, for fear that the days were running out.”

“How does a Time Master run out of time?” Jonah finally asked, smile on his face.

Rip was rolling his eyes, about to scoff back a comment when the sound of footsteps outside alerted them to someone else’s presence. Immediately on-task, they sprang to attention, looking at one another as they tried to place the sound exactly, peering over the hay bale to see a man emerge from the door below them.

“I think it may be time to run again,” Rip hissed under his breath, hearing an annoyed sigh to his right.

“Well, ain’t that just our luck.”

The next time is a week and a half later, in the street, Jonah’s arm slung around his neck as they swayed heavily, boots slipping in the mud. Cheap whiskey perfumed the air between them as they staggered through the streets, wandering homewards, the fog of drunkenness making their heads light and bodies heavy. Rip was getting distracted by everything, in wonder of what he saw still, trying to walk off towards homes and people and horses, anchored only by the body by his side guiding him.

Words seemed to help too, so Jonah asked again, storing away information about the enigma he was starting to love each time he put forward the same question.

“Tell me about the future.”

“ _Fuck_ , Jonah,” Rip cursed loudly, pulling away as he spoke, loud and brash and unapologetic. Having spent a life constrained in so many ways, first the streets of London, then the refuge and finally the Academy, cutting lose was new to him. Rebellion was a fire hard stamped out. “I couldn’t breathe there. There were so many rules, it was like a silence - but no, that’s not right . . . It was like I spent my entire life in a quiet room, never leaving. Going from that to coming here was like-”

He paused to hiccup loudly, causing Jonah to burst into laughter until he was shushed, Rip’s face annoyed until the other man held his up apologetically. Jonah mimed zipping his lips, and the other man continued.

“It was like the first time you ever heard music, heard a melody,” Rip explained drunkenly, face clearing. Leaning into Jonah, he glanced around the blissfully empty street before grabbing his cowboy by the sleeve, dragging him to a darkened space between two buildings and pushing him against the nearest wall. Hearing a laugh in response, Rip leaned forward in the darkness until his lips found the smile, pressing soft kisses into the corner of Jonah’s lip, working his way across them. He grinned and pulled back as Jonah tried to pull him closer, letting their faces rest teasingly close. “When I came here, I had only a few notes, a broken rhythm of hope and . . .and freedom. The tune has been getting louder, Jonah. The world is _singing_.”

“I wish I could hear what you do, Rip,” Jonah admitted quietly, catching a strand of hair between his fingers and curling them closer into his hair, pulling him closer. “I wish I could see the world the way you do.”

The moment of quiet, the only sound their gentle breathing and even in the darkness, each knowing the other was smiling, was broken by Rip’s sudden humming. The tune was butchered and a little sad, a collection of notes half-dreamed, coming out of his inebriated throat badly, disconnected and too loud. Even then, it was beautiful. It sounded like coming home.

Jonah broke it off by pulling Rip into him, silencing his lips with his own.

A month into their relationship, they take their horses and go riding for a day, a lull in action in town warning of an inevitable explosion; ignoring the signs, they had a day off. It might not have been the smartest decision, but it had been a few weeks of running around waiting for the sky to fall, and they deserved a break. It was a chance worth taking.

A bight day welcomed them as they rode out, Jonah talking about some rock a few hours away that the town could supposedly be seen from, but which also gave a vantage point to see twenty miles in each direction. He had originally cited that it would be good to scope out the Stillwater Gangs arrival, to check if more were coming, but that argument was thinly veiled, Rip saw right through it.

In the Wild West, with a gang on their trail and a time where relationships like theirs wasn’t accepted, it was hard to find places to go on dates. Out of town, in an idyllic spot, without the eyes and eyes of Calvert on them, they could finally have a day alone, with no pressing worries but finding their way back later.

“Tell me about the future.”

The sun is shining down on them as they sit atop the rock, a large boulder marking the empty desert, with no trace of where it came from or how it came to be there. Side by side, feet over the edge, Jonah had his hand over Rip’s. The breeze was light but not enough to blow sand into their eyes, all the way up there at the top of the world.

Jonah was breathless as he asked, the climb up the rock steep but not impossible with help; a smile creased his shaded lips.

“Jonah . . .” Rip sounded tired, leaning against him slightly. “You really need a new question.”

“Indulge me,” he replied. “It’s not every day a guy gets to talk to a real-life time traveller, one from the future, no less. There are a lot of things I thought I might never know that you can tell me.”

“It’s – it’s not as great as you think. Yes, I _am_ from the future,” Rip said, voice sullen and low in a way he rarely showed. But while he remained optimistic, a bright flame in the world, there was also a sadness about the other man that flickered in his eyes sometimes, something deeply rooted within him. Jonah saw it, the signs he recognised from himself, and worried that one day, that Rip would become like him: that he would let the scales tip away from the hope, into the despair. “That doesn’t mean it was a better time. I grew up alone, Jonah. My father was gone before I was born, my mother died . . . by the time I got to the refuge, I’d lived on the streets for years before a Time Master spotted my potential and sent me to a place I might grow to become someone. That’s why I followed them with such blind faith for so long, why I still owe them a debt – that man saved my life. He saw something worth saving in me that I didn’t even believe existed . . . after that, Miss Xavier was the closest thing I ever had to a family, bless her soul. She might be the only person who ever truly cared for me at all . . . but I was not the easiest child -”

“I can imagine.”

“Not like that,” Rip replied to Jonah’s attempt to lighten the mood, voice sharp. “I was already grown by then, I was never a child, not really. I was already . . . _ruined_ by the world. The Time Masters just gave me a direction for my anger. They saw the potential I had to be a weapon and fired me into the timestream hoping I’d hit the intended target.”

“And you didn’t,” Jonah said loudly, having turned to Rip during the other man’s rant, seeing the agitation grow through a clenched jaw and steely tone, hand beneath his own curling into a fist. He put a hand under Rip’s chin and turned it up towards his own face, meeting eyes colder than he was used to. “You saved Moore, Rip! _You_ did that. Not me; _you_. It was a choice, to obey orders or to let an innocent man die, and you did what was right. That’s who you are.”

Jonah tapped a finger into Rip’s chest, right where his heart would be. Eyes brimming with tears closed as Jonah kissed him, the taste of salt mingling in their mouths until Jonah pulled away, resting his forehead against Rip’s, looking to see the coldness was lifting.

He wasn’t done speaking yet, “What happened to us? That’s not who we are, not ever. Shit happens. Life will beat you up, split you apart and then spit on you because that’s what it does – but what you do after that pain is what matters. Whether you let it define you or motivate you to be better to it than it was to you.”

Rip blinked slowly, breathing still hitched as another tear traced tracks down his cheek. This one was not filled with pain, but gratitude – he could count the people who believed in him on one hand, and Jonah was looking at him like he was worth something, like the first Time Master he had ever met had, like Mary Xavier did. Three people who he owed greatly. Two of which, he loved.

When he spoke, his voice was barely a breath. “Thank you.”

“You never have to thank me.”

“I’m going to anyway,” Rip said, choking out a wet laugh. His face cracked into a smile as Jonah kissed him again, leaning back and forth with a comforting murmur that wasn’t words as such, not that he heard them, more of a string of phrases intending hope, a presence of calm. Eventually, he paused, and Rip looked up. “Enough of the future. I’d much rather talk about right now.”

Jonah just smiled. “I think that’d be alright, partner. I like right now.”

With that, he kissed him in a way that left Rip’s back against the rock, smiling and kissing and laughing as the day passed them by.

*

Rip asked his own question two weeks after that. It was early morning, the town still sleeping apart from them, the sun already half-risen in the sky, a pocket of the universe in blissful silence. On the bed, Jonah was sitting against the headboard as Rip dangled his legs off the side, facing him, pulling back to look him in the eye.

God, Jonah was beautiful. It hit him every time he looked at him, but more so in this light. However, it stuck his face in a way that make the scar there burn red in a way that caught his attention not for being a disfigurement, but because it looked _painful_.

Reaching out to touch it, Rip noticed the way Jonah visibly flinched, leaving his fingertips hovering above the scar, not quite touching it. After a moment, Jonah leaned into the touch, allowing it in a vulnerable way, eyes wide with worry. Rip’s just moved in concern as he touched the skin, tracing it lightly with his fingertips, touch gentle.

“How did it happen?”

“The war,” Jonah shrugged vaguely, hesitant to answer at first, not moving away from the touch but averting his gaze, looking out of the window. “Got on the wrong side of the wrong man, you know how it is.”

Rip’s brow creased, “You fought in the war?”

“I ran away from the war,” Jonah replied dryly, waving his hand and wincing as he thought of it, face pinched. He was always so sure of himself, never speaking a word more than he had to and therefore believing every word he said, but there was something off about how he was talking now. “I deserted, changed sides when I realised I was on the wrong one. Didn’t get much thanks for that.”

“You were a confederate.”

“I fought for whoever I believed was right – you have to understand, there was misinformation going ‘round at first, I didn’t understand what I was fighting, I just . . .”

“Fighting was in your blood,” Rip nodded, “Same as me. You didn’t care who you were fighting for-”

“As long as it kept me from thinking about all the other shit in my life, yeah,” Jonah agreed, feeling Rip’s hand leave his face and looking up with expectations of seeing judgment on the other man’s face; he saw only understanding. “I know I did wrong. Hell, me of all people shoulda known what I was fightin’ for was wrong, the way I was raised.” At Rip’s questioning glance, he elaborated, “Daddy was a drunk, mom left him eventually. Left me to die in the middle of nowhere after that, said I was more trouble than I was worth.”

“That’s awful, Jonah. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be; I was better off shot of him,” he replied easily, a ghost of a smile tracing his lips, hard edges soft for a moment. “A tribe took me in. Apache. At first, I was an outsider, they gave me food and shelter and I did a lot of work for them . . . then one day, I saved the chief’s life from a puma. They made me a full member after that. So when it came to war, as soon as I saw one man thinking he could own another, I knew it weren’t right. I switched sides. This,” he waved a hand in front of his scar. “This is a small price to pay. I’ve been making up for what I did on the wrong side ever since.”

Rip smiled, edges of his lips a little smug as he leaned closer to Jonah. He echoed back, “What happens to us isn’t who we are. It’s what you do with it that matters.”

“Asshole,” Jonah laughed out loudly, face cracked open with a grin, already the scar seeming to disappear behind the brightness of that expression. “You don’t get to quote me to me, Hunter.”

“Well, you are the wisest person I know,” Rip laughed back gently, “Maybe you should take your own advice every once in a while: forgive yourself.”

“Maybe we both should.”

“I’m starting to believe that’s possible,” he replied, and for the first time in a long time, actually believed that. Life was looking up; he was where he was supposed to be, doing right, on the start of a long path that just might be leading somewhere.

*

“Idiot,” Jonah said in greeting, dropping Rip’s drink down on the table they had chosen in the corner of the Saloon, where they had discovered was the best place to glean new information. It was said almost affectionately, and Rip knew that gruff voice could be so damn soft when he wanted it to be, at which thought he kept right on smirking into his drink as he took a sip, despite Jonah’s lecturing tone. “Stop grinning like you’re simple, people are looking.”

“So?”

Jonah rolled his eyes. “I don’t give two shits if they know about us, but we’re trying to take down a gang here. We don’t want to be the talk of the town right now.”

Rip pouted a little, but dutifully composed his face, catching Jonah’s eye as he did in a way he knew usually made the other man crack up. This time, Jonah remained still as a stone, something obviously bothering him as he gulped down his drink, eyes on everyone but Rip.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothin’,” Jonah answered too quickly, looking annoyed with himself the second the words left his lips. “Heard some rumours today, is all.”

Rip was as steady and consistent as a candle to Jonah’s tendency to burn himself out. He asked quietly, “Tell me.”

“Word is, the Stillwater Gang is trying to get a new Sheriff installed in town. One who’s in their pocket,” Jonah told him. Over his glass, his eyes were serious and worried, adding weight to his words that forced Rip to pay attention. The last month had been like a holiday, spent in a state of bliss, playing cowboy and feeling free for the first time perhaps in his life. Sooner or later, he had known it would have to end. “If that happens, they’ll have free run of the town. The people are scared enough with them just here, if they manage to take control legally-”

“They could do whatever they wanted,” Rip finished grimly. From what he knew from the Time Masters before his mission, he could fill in the blanks. “If they gain more control and influence now, the timeline could be changed permanently. In the original timeline, Mr. Moore’s death prompts a Sheriff he knew to take his place in Calvert. That man drove out the gang and in a few years, after that the Stillwater Gang was no more.”

“But we changed that,” Jonah said. “So what now? This guy, do you think we could get him to become the Sheriff anyway?”

Rip made a face, shrugging indecisively. “Unlikely. From what our records show, it was an act of revenge at his friend’s death, with Mr. Moore alive . . .”

“We’re screwed.”

“A little blunt, but . . .” Rip trailed off, tilting his head as if to agree. It was starting to look bleak because he disobeyed orders, but he wasn’t ready to give up yet. He had to believe that he could do the right thing and protect the timeline; that there wasn’t an ‘or’ at all. Looking up at Jonah, he pursed his lips thoughtfully. “You know, all it took was one man to stand up to the Stillwater Gang the first time. And there are _two_ of us . . .”

“No,” Jonah said at Rip’s suggestive tone, shaking a finger. “No way. I’m a bounty hunter, not a sheriff! This isn’t how I do things.”

“That’s because you’ve always done things alone, you have me now!”

“ _No_.”

“Jonah,” he said, desperation tugging at his tone. Imploring, he caught the other man’s gaze and held it, refusing to let Jonah look away, and turn his back on this town and what they had done. “This is _my_ fault, I know. Disobeying is my burden to bear . . . I have to save Calvert. But I would much rather do it with you at my side.”

“Damn it, Rip,” Jonah cursed in a sigh, leaning back from the table. Although he looked away, his eyes soon found their way back towards his partner, who had worn his heart on his sleeve as long as Jonah had known him, but was holding it out in his hands right now. He sighed wearily, “You know I won’t leave you here alone. I guess that makes me your Deputy.”

Rip’s face softened as it brightened, until he was suppressing another grin, lips twisted into a thin line and eyes singing. He looked over assuredly. “Thank you, Jonah.”

“Yeah,yeah, asshole,” he replied, forcing a gruff laugh out. “You can pay me back later.”

Smile turning into a smirk, Rip drank some more of his beer and relaxed, looking around the bar. It was still a dive that smelt of blood and sawdust, each hour heralded by a new fight, but it was starting to feel familiar; to feel like home. These dim halls had seen a lot of travellers, none from quite so far as him, but was a place for strays nonetheless – Calvert gave the homeless a place to stay and the wanderers a reason to. Jonah and he had worked that out.

Now, all they had to do was keep this town standing.

“Sheriff Hunter,” he mused aloud, hearing a snort from across at it. “It does have quite a good ring to it.”

*

Three months after he arrived at Calvert, Rip Hunter was the Sheriff of it.

It wasn’t the ideal situation, or the expected one, but he was dealing with it the best he could. This was not the life he anticipated for himself; it certainly wasn’t the mission he was sent on – but it was what he _chose_ , and that meant everything. At the very least, he wasn’t alone.

“Asshole,” Jonah stuck his head round the station door two weeks after Rip had taken the title, swinging on it with one arm. It was his usual greeting. This time, the difference was he was bleeding from the lip and had a dangerous look in his eye. “I rustled us up some action, you in?”

“When am I not,” Rip replied, getting to his feet. The last two weeks he had slept less and ached more than he had in his entire life. The job and his life were indistinguishable, they had collided and merged so intrinsically, it was a programmed response with which he tugged on his coat and holstered his gun, badge glinting at his hip as he left the station. Treading the streets beside Jonah towards the Saloon, he looked over. “What have you got?”

“Stillwater dickbag who gave me a reason to truss ‘im up a little, going after Sally at the bar-”

“Dirtbag,” Rip responded automatically, worried for their friend.

The people of Calvert had taken them to heart as soon as they stood up as its protectors, offering them friendship - Sally in particular was their eyes and ears at the Saloon. A good woman. Out of them both, Jonah was especially flourishing under their eyes, growing more open and less gruff as people brought out the best of him. He took to being a guardian as a duck takes to water.

“Yeah. I couldn’t touch him til he’d done something wrong,” Jonah stated the obvious – they had tried just arresting known gang members, but couldn’t do anything without a proven charge. Unless they were given reason to intervene, they were powerless – so took their chances as soon as they were presented. “Took him out, roughed him up a little – he started talking after that,” Jonah replied easily, knuckles bloody but mouth agape with a satisfied grin. “He’s working the blockade.”

Rip paused, eyes immediately alight. “You got one of them?”

His excitement was warranted as he eagerly paused, desperate to hear more: in an attempt to gain control through influence and ‘root out’ those responsible for the deaths of their men by bullying the town into lynching the guilty party, not that anyone but them knew the true culprits, the Stillwater Gang had made a blockade around Calvert. No food was getting into town until their demands were met, not that they made them explicitly. Word still got around, though. It was out there: the town would have to sacrifice its freedom to them or starve to death.

Either way, they won.

If there was one sure thing left, it was that Rip and Jonah would die before they let that happen.

“Sure did,” Jonah replied, matching his enthusiasm. “You can thank me later for that yet again.”

“Jonah, I could kiss you.”

“Later,” he smirked, deep voice warm as they got closer, stopping just outside. Turning on Rip with suddenly serious eyes, he glanced apprehensively at the bar. “He might tell us more, might not. Be prepared for the worst, Rip.”

“That’s our motto, isn’t it?”

Sarcastic words leaving his mouth, Rip heard the huffed laugh at them as he jogged up the steps to the Saloon, doors swinging open as he breezed through – to see Sally the barmaid with a shotgun trained on a man in a chair, said man looking severely pissed off and sporting Jonah’s handiwork on the gashes on his face.

“Thank you Sally, we’ll take it from here.”

Lifting her gun immediately, her glare turned into a sunny smile in his direction as she returned to her space behind the bar. “You got it, Sherriff Hunter. Will you be sticking around afterwards?”

“Depends how this goes,” Rip replied, crossing his arms as his gaze shifted to the man. Feeling Jonah come to a stop just behind him, the knowledge that the other man had his back filled him with a sense of confidence which was growing with every day in the role. He smirked in their prisoner’s direction, “Now, how this goes is up to you, Mr . . . ?”

“I ain’t telling you shit.”

“His name is Crull,” Jonah supplied with a bite, walking to stand beside Rip with a vindictive grimace. “Anias Crull. Low-level lackey and Grade A-”

“What my partner means to say, Mr. Crull, is that there’s really no use lying to us.”

Rip interrupted smoothly, never betraying a second of hesitation or doubt. He just stared Crull down, knowing that the threat of Jonah was enough – all he had to do was talk. It was how they worked, a habit they had fallen into; in his time, they would have called it the ‘good cop, bad cop’ routine. For them, it was as natural as breathing to back each other up.

“And if you try, we have some god damn good persuasion techniques,” Jonah added, cracking his knuckles audibly. In a way that was so purposefully casual, nobody in the room had any doubt he was in control and could stop anything that happened, he crossed over to the bar and sat, ordering a drink with a smile. He waved over with his glass, “Carry on, Sheriff.”

Rip hid an eye-roll at that, forcing himself to keep his eyes on Crull.

“Tell me what you know about the blockade.”

Crull’s top lip curled into a sneer, asking with a feigned innocence, the bite cutting through it enough that it left no doubt that he knew _exactly_ what Rip was talking about. “Blockade? What blockade?”

“You mean for me to believe that the so-called bandit attacks on all deliveries coming into the town are just coincidence?”

“You’re the Sheriff, ain’t you,” Crull replied. “It’s your job to find whoever is responsible for those tragedies, not mine. And yet here you are, wasting time talking to me.”

Agitatedly, Rip blew air out of his nose as he grit his teeth, moving towards the sitting man threateningly. He knew that he didn’t cut the most impressive figure – he was too skinny to reveal just how efficient a fighter he was, but when he got angry – it was a quiet rage, even then. Something in the way his eyes grew dark, body coiled, about to explode.

Even the dumbest of people knew not to tempt the rage of a good man.

“You know damn well what I’m talking about,” he snapped, grabbing Crull by the collar and dragging him to his feet, hand clasped around the other man’s throat a moment later. Faces inches away, he noticed the way the man’s eyes widened a fraction, betraying at least an inclination to fear that had not been there before. “People are _dying_ , Mr. Crull. Good people; _kind_ people, starving in their homes because you and your kind think you can bully your way through town. But I’m responsible for keeping those people safe - and do you know what that means?”

Face blanched, Crull barely shook his head at that, fright in his silence.

Rip leaned closer, “That’s means there is _nothing_ I won’t do to protect them. Do you understand?”

“You – you wouldn’t try anything,” Crull finally got out between breaths, the hand around his throat just loose enough to keep him from blacking out, but more than painful enough to keep him gasping. Rip had been trained by the best, after all. He knew how to inflict pain. “The Stillwater Gang wouldn’t let it slide! And you’re the- sheriff. You _can’t_.”

“That’s true,” Rip smirked softly, dangerously, the edge of the confidence which shone through whenever he got onto a roll creeping into his words. He looked over to Jonah. “But _he_ can.”

*

Crull told them everything. He gave them names and addresses, routes the gang would take, a glimpse into their hierarchy – all they would need to break the blockade, if they worked fast. It was something he had learned early on in the Time Masters: the threat of violence was often more effective than the act itself.

“I’ve got to say, it’s a pleasure to watch you work,” Jonah told him later that night, pressing a kiss into Rip’s shoulder. There was whiskey and smugness in his voice, but Rip’s form was still as he sat on the edge of the bed, unresponsive to the touch. With a frown, Jonah moved until he could see the other man’s face, finding it staring into space; Rip’s eyes were out of focus, face slack, lost in thought. It was becoming all too common, so Jonah sighed, “What’s wrong?”

Rip blinked, “What?”

“There’s something the matter with you, staring off like that. I’ve seen a shorter twenty yard stare on soldiers. So tell me. What’s wrong?”

“I . . . I don’t like having to do things the way we did today,” Rip admitted, voice hushed. Feeling a hand reach for his own, he took one of Jonah’s in both of his, thumb rubbing lazily against his palms. “It doesn’t feel right. None of this . . .”

“Tell me,” Jonah urged gently. Most days, he thought he understood Rip. Others he was reminded that the man was from so far in the future, it was barely conceivable. “Is it the Gang? Do you think we missed something? Because Crull is still at the station, we could do talk to him again-”

“No, no,” He shook his head. “It’s the opposite. I don’t like having to . . . hurting people doesn’t come easily, not to me. I always wanted to protect, not- whatever this is.”

“I know it’s hard for you, because you were raised in the future and this is . . . messy. What we did wasn’t wrong, though.”

“It feels like it is - don’t say that’s the way it is, I _know_.”

“Then you’ll know some days are just _bad_ , Rip. Some days the world wants to hurt you.”

“I’ve seen worse days than this. None that _I’ve_ caused, though-”

“Don’t start that,” Jonah sounded annoyed, bed bobbing as he too shook his head. “You spared a good man’s life, that’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

“It is when the town is starving because of it!”

“Because of the Stillwater, not because of you,” he shouted back in response to Rip’s growing volume and agitated, the hand not being held moving to grab his shoulder. The motion was supposed to ground Rip, to anchor him to the moment, but it just caused him to push away further, standing up and staying with his back to Jonah, who kept trying in vain. “Hey, they’re doing this! They’re causing the blockade, they’re the ones trying to take over the town in the first place! You’re trying to stop them, Rip.” He moved to stand behind him, reaching out to place a hand on his shoulder. “ _We_ are.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t,” Rip said suddenly, turning. Jonah had heard the anger, the frustration building, but he didn’t expect the tears which burned alongside the blaze of anger in his eyes. “Everything that’s happening is happening because I didn’t follow orders. _I_ made that choice, knowing that there would be consequences. And I did it because of you.”

Jonah stepped back. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know, I don’t-” Rip waved with his hands, tears finally leaking free in desperation. “I just - nevermind. I’m going out.”

“Wait-”

He was out of the door, the words following him. Rip didn’t stop.

The streets of Calvert weren’t the safest place to be at night, but it had been getting better since he had stepped up as the Sheriff: as he wandered out towards the Saloon, he wasn’t worrying about the danger. It was probably that which left him exposed to attack. Head spinning, the world seeming to rush at him all at once with a swirl of thoughts sinking in his stomach saying that this was all his fault, that the town could be the forfeit for him being selfish and wanting Jonah, he had barely been registering where his feet were taking him, frankly.

A punch to the gut stopped him short.

Doubling over, Rip coughed out in pain, gasping as he tried to catch a glimpse of his attacker. A dark silhouette was all that met his gaze before a heavy blow to the jaw sent his head snapping to one side, stumbling along with it to stay on his feet. Rip wasn’t quite disorientated yet; the third and fourth blows to the head did that. By the fifth, he was on his knees in the mud.

“Please . . . please.”

Even to him, the way his pleas were cut short by his own gasping breaths sounded pathetic. Lungs burning, blood dripping down into his open mouth, Rip choked, falling forward into the dirt.

The next time he opened his eyes, it was to the wooden ceiling that told him he was home - the knots in the woods a swirl like constellations to his eyes. It was the same view he woke up to every day, the one of their room at the inn, so it took Rip a few seconds to realize that there was something wrong, that this wasn’t a normal morning. That shock came with the feeling of all of his injuries suddenly hitting him like a train, all the aches and pains appearing in a second; without much self-preservation, he let out a low groan.

“Steady,” Jonah said, appearing at his side, his hand going to Rip’s chest to make sure he didn’t try to move. Everything about the touch and the way his eyes grew soft looking down was gentle, but his voice projected his usual aloofness. “I see you ain’t dead. Better than I expected.”

“What happened?”

“You were an idiot, but there’s nothin’ new there.”

“Thanks.”

“Well, if the shoe fits . . .” Jonah trailed off with a smirk, noticing the way Rip’s bruised face twisted into what could have been a smile, too. He turned back to him, “I was worried. I came looking for you when you didn’t come – when you didn’t come back.”

“ _Home_ ,” Rip supplied softly, moving with pain to put his hand over Jonah’s on his chest. The other man did the rest of the work for him, winding their fingers together, looking grateful for that admission.

“When I found you – I thought you were dead, face down in the street like that. I thought it had finally caught up to us and you were _dead_ ,” Jonah broke off, slamming his lips shut before he could get worked up. Just the memory was enough to make his mouth go dry. It had been like walking in a nightmare, finding Rip that night. A quiet sadness lit up his eyes, “What you said, the other day? Talkin’ like we’re doomed or cursed or some shit – you were wrong. It’s not . . . it’s a _wonder_.”

“Jonah, I was just upset and . . . being an arse, frankly. You don’t have to do this -”

“No, I was thinking about it while you were out. I need you to know this, Rip, in case . . .” _In case the next time one of us is like this, we don’t wake up._ Jonah swallowed hard, the hand on Rip’s chest clenching in pain. “You n’ I, we’re not made for peace. We live for conflict; for war. We need action to justify our lives by what we do for others. So for either of us to be happy for just a second is a wonder, and I’ve been – I’ve been happier than I can ever remember being for the past two months.”

“Me too,” Rip put in, seeing the distress written all over his lover’s face and reaching out a weak hand to touch it, cradling his head with a palm against Jonah’s jaw. The other man leaned into it, breath catching for a moment. Jonah did not cry. But that didn’t mean for a second that he didn’t show pain or feel it, you just had to know how to read him; right then, he was falling apart. So Rip spoke gently, affirming all that he had felt with words, “I’ve been happy too, here with you. Free in a way that I never even imagined. I’ve loved before, but always – always at the back of my mind, there was a little voice saying it couldn’t last, not. . . not there. Not the way I was living.”

“And now?”

“Here? Everything is different here.”

Jonah sniffed audibly, jerking his chin up to nod stiffly at Rip’s words, barely able to make eye contact as his hand relaxed, turning to grip his back tightly. It was a quiet moment in the middle of a series of catastrophes. Both of them looked at themselves and saw only bloody hands and irredeemable actions, but looked at the other and saw the sun. Rip was a light to which he didn’t think his eyes would ever quite adjust, so bright it was blinding, but through squinted eyes he saw the genuine smile on Rip’s face, at him, and Jonah knew it was a _choice_. And he would never get tired of looking at the man from another time.

“I forgive you,” Jonah said, firmly but voice barely a breath. Again, his eyes dipped down, not quite able to meet Rip’s persistent gaze. “But if you’re going to be with me with this thing hangin’ over your head, thinkin’ this is something wrong because of the choices we both made to try and be god-damn better than the shit storm around us? I can’t do that, Rip. I can forgive you, I can – I can love you. But you have to forgive yourself.” He finally looked up to catch Rip’s eyes, swimming with pleading and trust and affection, brimming out of his eyes and spilling into the room. “You can’t take it all with you, my friend. You gotta let it go sometime.”

The words affected Rip, stirring up all the guilt he had been feeling over everything that was happening to Calvert with the Stillwater Gang like sand in a storm. It turned and churned in his stomach. It make his eyes overflow, hands grip tighter, soul sink.

“I’m trying,” he breathed. It was a small admission, but it felt like something big; the turning of a volume, not just a page. Letting himself just breathe for a moment, Rip squeezed his eyes tightly shut, feeling the wetness on his face as a result. He opened them with clarity. Choking out a weak laugh, his lips turned up at the sight of Jonah, “So . . . you love me, huh?”

“You’re delusional,” Jonah replied with his usual wit, but there was a wink and a smirk at it’s side. “Just imagining things – must be all those blows to the head. The fantasies some people dream up . . .”

Two could play at that game. “Well I must be bloody dreaming if _Jonah Hex_ just had a conversation about his feelings.”

Jonah threw the cloth he had brought over to mop up Rip’s bloody face at his head, the both of them breaking out into giggles, in pain and through guilt, despite everything going on in the world outside and how desperate it was. But still trying. Still laughing. They still had each other.

For now, that was enough.

*

It was another month of recovery and planning before they have a solid plan to take out the blockade.

Rip, it turned out, was the worst patient in the history of the world.

The day after he woke up he tried to get out of bed, slinging on a hat and badge and making it halfway back towards the Sheriff’s station before he collapsed. That reopened the stitches above his eye and jostled broken ribs enough to leave him with dead air in his lungs, blacking out as Jonah threw him over his shoulder and carried him home. He woke up with a pair of cuffs keeping him confined to the bed while he was recovering. Jonah was adamant on that, saying that next time he’d leave Rip to die in the street if he tried to do something stupid while he knew he was injured and needed rest, the cuffs staying there for three days until he was sure Rip wouldn’t try to leave again, or at least wouldn’t collapse somewhere if he did.

Sullen as he lay in bed, Rip put most of his efforts into finding new and inventive ways to argue that he should be out there doing something. He griped and groaned and complained. He certainly didn’t tell Jonah when the pain was getting higher, sitting in silence and refusing to admit he was actually injured until a yelp of pain would escape at the lightest of touches, much to Jonah’s annoyance. These small setbacks put him back weeks in accidents at his own fault, his reluctance to actually sit still and heal his biggest enemy at that time.

Action called to Rip more strongly than any other addictive force; he spent his month recovering desperate to put himself directly back in the line of fire. It was going to be the death of him, and probably Jonah, at this rate. The Bounty Hunter didn’t sign up to be anyone’s god-damn nurse maid, and Jonah was one day away from screaming when Rip finally seemed to brighten, able to walk without groaning and face mostly healed.

It took him approximately three hours to start planning their next fight, and another week to convince Jonah it was a good plan.

“This is not a good plan.”

“But it _is_ a plan,” Rip argued back, hiding the chatter of his teeth. Even in the dessert, it froze at night, the temperature plummeting in the shadows of sand dunes and cliff-faces, a frigid blue of lines and an unearthly stillness. On the food wagon they were driving towards town, disguised with ponchos and large hats, it was distorted somewhat; the hard wooden bench was jolting and rattling his bones, the noise and rocking of the wagon enough to break the serenity of the landscape. Rip had the reins, and looked over to a crossed-armed Jonah. “Do you have a better one?”

“ _No_.”

“Then this is as good as it gets.”

“I don’t like rushing into things, we only have half of the story,” Jonah griped back, pouting more, if that were possible. “I just think we shoulda waited until we knew more. Knew their numbers, what their arms are like, exactly how they do it. Especially when you’re just getting better-”

“I _am_ better, Jonah,” he replied, stressing the second word. Even in his half-healed state, Rip was still adamant there was nothing wrong at all. “We’ve been over this. Me vanishing as the Sheriff sends a message-”

“‘Don’t care what message it sends, it don’t mean shit what people say. I care about you not getting your dumb-ass killed running half-cocked into a fight you ain’t ready for! I care about not having to put you in the ground, Rip.”

“This _matters_.”

“You matter more.”

“I-” Rip started strongly, but had to pause to take a breath, the intensity of Jonah’s eyes on him too much. The truth in his argument rang out – he was still aching, but he had to believe this was the right thing to do. A deep breath. “I took an oath to protect the people of Calvert, who _I_ put in danger-”

“Shit. Not this again . . .”

“The Stillwater Gang is looking for _me_!”

“For us,” Jonah argued back, leaning closer. “There were two of us at that shack, Rip. Nothing you say is gonna change that. We both killed to save ourselves and an innocent man, I refuse to accept that was the wrong thing to do – what’s happening is on them, not us.”

“That doesn’t change how I feel,” Rip replied, sighing with the words, guilt sewn into his knotted brow these days. In the freezing atmosphere, this didn’t feel like those times he and Jonah bickered, this felt like something more, stomach twisting even as he spoke. “I feel responsible. That’s why I became the Sheriff, and part of that responsibility is to do this - to put their needs above mine. Even before . . . even before I came here, that’s what I did. That’s who I am.”

Jonah reeled back; not even able to hide his shock at the deadness in Rip’s eyes as he made his admission. “I thought you didn’t want to be that person anymore.”

“I’m still a Time Master.”

“No, you were _better_ than they are! They sent you here to let a good man die, and you made a different choice-”

“And look where that got me,” Rip answered back, bitterly. It wasn’t directed at Jonah, but at himself – the guilt about all that was happening was getting so heavy, he could feel his back begin to break. He had caused this, believing he could be free and do the right thing, as if there wouldn’t be consequences, as if he was some kind of a hero. He _wasn’t_. “People are dying because I thought I knew better than the Time Masters. What was I thinking? That’s – that’s not the point, anway,” he paused, “The point is this is my choice, to fight for them. You might not care about the message we’re sending, but I do.”

“And what’s that, genius?”

“That someone can stand up to them . . . that someone _will_. This town could fall under their control so easily, be corrupted and torn apart by fighting and murder and bullies who think they can just take what they want – I won’t let that happen,” Rip said fiercely. He was half-pleading with his partner, begging for Jonah to understand why this was so important to him. “Being the Sheriff, I’m visibly saying that the Stillwater Gang hasn’t won, not yet. The people need that. Just look at how they’ve welcomed us, look at Sally – people will fight for themselves, if you give them a banner to march under. They’ll stand up and push back if they see someone else doing the same. It’s that . . . touch of humanity, that simple act of courage – _that’s_ what I’m fighting for, Jonah.” His face was shining now, bright like the sun. Eyes wet, features cleared of the guilt in a moment of profound realisation and _hope_ , Rip leaned forwards, trying to make him understand. “I have to believe in that notion: that the world _wants_ to be saved. I have to.”

It was a simple gesture, a grand statement. It fell between them as a barrier, at once drawing the lines for Jonah, clearly. He knew he would follow Rip to the gates of hell, if he asked. He believed in the same fighting spirit, the same power – but now, he cared, too. Selfishly, the grandeur of the statement was dulled when he thought it could come at the cost of Rip’s blood on his hands, of having to bury his lover under baking sand if they lost this magnificent fight they had built up in their heads.

All he had was a head full of sand and blood when he looked away from Rip, head swimming. It seemed clear now that no matter how much he loved Rip, that Rip would put what he saw as his responsibility to be some kind of guardian first. That he would always be second.

He tried to see it as a noble thing and not the kick in the gut it felt like.

“You don’t owe the world shit, Rip.”

“I know,” he said quietly. “That doesn’t mean I can stop believing in it.”

“And what about us, huh?” Jonah asked. The nonchalance he wore like armour still stood, but it was dented and cracked, a hint of genuine . . . fear, was the best Rip could place the emotion on his lover’s face, shining through the cracks. “If you’re still a Time Master, then you’re still the man who couldn’t see a future outside of his orders. Where does that leave me?”

“Jonah, I didn’t mean-”

Then the world exploded into gunfire.

*

In the end, nobody won that night. Rip and Jonah killed enough of the Stillwater Gang’s men to break the blockade and get their food wagon into town, but took enough damage that some of the provisions were lost, both a victory and a defeat. What they had just wasn’t enough.

“We need to bring in more wagons,” Rip argued the next night as he changed a bandage on Jonah’s ribs. The two of them had taken damage from the fight, however the Sheriff seemed to be brushing it aside yet again – with each moment reminding Jonah why they had been arguing. “I’m thinking it would take two days to get word to the farmers that we’ll need more supplies, I could fix the wagon while we’re waiting-”

“Hold up,” Jonah cut him off, stressing each word. “You want to do that _again_?”

“Of course I do. The town won’t survive for long with that we have.”

Jonah rolled his eyes at that, snatching the bandages away from Rip and finishing the job himself, beginning to pace in front of the door. Rip stayed by the window, arms crossed. It was a look that screamed nothing was going to change his mind – but Jonah had to try.

“That’s why we had seeds in the first wagon - so we can start growing ourselves! With the blockade, it makes more sense to stay in the town, use what we have rather than risk our lives on another suicide run.”

“So you’d rather this become a siege?” Rip asked, shaking his head in annoyance. “Please, Jonah. I think I know a _little_ more about these situations than you do.”

Jonah scoffed, “Please-”

“I was at the Siege of Carthage!” Rip shouted. It was easy to forget some days how much those eyes had seen, especially when they smiled at Jonah with looks of tenderness, a softness and hope still present, but there was a darkness lingering. It exploded in moments like these, and Jonah just tried to avoid the shrapnel. “We were barricaded within the city for three years, Jonah. The town was trying to surrender, and they attacked anyway; the Romans refused to accept our terms, but not before we handed over most of our arms. There was nothing. People fought with swords of sharpened brooms or pans, they made their own weapons and tried . . .” he trailed off, jaw locking as he forcibly stopped as if plagued by memory, eyes focusing on something Jonah could not see. “There were people starving in the streets . . . women, children . . . when the walls finally broke, the Romans sold who they didn’t kill into slavery. Over 450,000 men died.”

“Rip . . . I’m sorry,” Jonah breathed. He hated that there was periods of Rip’s life he could never know, unable to even imagine some of the things his lover talked about.

“Don’t be sorry, Jonah. Make sure it doesn’t happen again,” Rip snapped. “Carthage tried to surrender, and look what happened. I won’t make the same mistake twice. I will not bow to the will of the Stillwater Gang, not ever.”

“You can stop it from happenin’ by making sure we have enough anyway, don’t you get it?” Jonah asked, walking forward, half-pleading with his eyes. “Help me plant a garden, help us _grow_ something-”

“It’s not fast enough.”

“It is,” Jonah begged, taking Rip’s face in his hands gently. The ache of the past day caught up to him all at once, and everything but his exhaustion melted as he looked deeply at Rip’s face, trying to convince him with a look. “Please, you gotta have a little patience. I – I know, I know it’s hard. You think I don’t care about these people, too? This place, these people . . . I didn’t think I’d be lucky enough to feel at _home_ anywhere again. But I do.” Rip was nodding softly, head moving underneath his hands, hair caught between Jonah’s fingers. He could feel Rip’s breath on his face, short, worried puffs of air caught with emotion, face turned down and broken. “I’m not gonna let them take our home from us, ya hear me? It’s not happenin’ on this earth. I won’t let them.”

He kissed Rip, hard; trying to cram every piece of hope and loneliness and desperation and love he felt into it. Jonah was never good with words, anyway. They always came out wrong: too sharp or brass or crude on his tongue, never eloquent enough to say all that he needed to. Action was his strongest suit – even if he acted rashly eighty percent of the time. It showed something, it meant something.

So Jonah tried with that kiss to convince Rip that together, there was nothing he believed they couldn’t do. That it didn’t matter that he would never be enough to be first in Rip’s book, as long as they stayed on the same page, in the same story, not to be torn apart by time. He tried to say that he would fight and die if Rip asked of it, but he just needed to try something different – to grow, to rebuild instead of going down the path of bloodshed and vengeance he had walked his whole life, because before meeting Rip, he had never thought it possible for the possibility to do so. That now he believed he could do something better, he was begging Rip to let them try, to stand with him.

To believe in him.

Rip pulled away first. He leaned his head against Jonah’s for a moment, eyes apologetic.

“It’s not enough,” he repeated coarsely, voice thick with emotion. “I’m going for more supplies. I can’t allow them to suffer . . . I’m sorry, Jonah.”

Rip walked away, the door dropping closed behind him with the boom of a tomb slamming shut. In his heart, he knew what he should have said to Jonah then was the truth: I love you.

He would regret not saying it for a long time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> listen, Rip has seen a lot and is an angsty bastard. Jonah doesn't have much self worth, which is why by the end of this chapter he firmly believes nobody would ever want to put him first. Next chapter, Rip will prove the opposite is true.
> 
> I mixed Jonah's pre & nu52 origins. hope you enjoyed!


	3. History is servitude, History is freedom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> MISSION THREE: SAVE JONAH HEX

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> v quick beginning notes! I am very sorry about the wait for this chapter, genuinely I am; I won't make excuses but I've had a busy summer for both good and bad reasons, so this ended up taking a backseat for a while. That being said, hopefully this very (very) long final chapter will be worth the wait - title, as always, from 'Little Gidding' - enjoy!

Two months passed with gunshots and the days marked off by the bruises left by the Stillwater Gang, like tally marks across their bodies, ugly splotches leaving both Rip and Jonah aching, so tired after long days trying to make sure the town wasn’t overrun that they basically collapsed each night. Gone were the quiet moments. There was no time for lazy days spent lying in bed and talking, or excursions out of town, or just days where there was nothing to do but commit Jonah’s face to memory until he could know it anywhere.

Time was something Rip had taken for granted for too long. It had never been against him in this way before.

Things were different now, between them. He and Jonah still fought together, still lived together; often he would wake to a brush of lips to his temple – but often now it was as Jonah left the room, off to work his garden in his own time before their day as Sheriff and Deputy began. It was slowly growing, but Jonah could only do so much by himself. Rip still went on dangerous food runs. Of course, Jonah followed him anyways, and he didn’t know what to say to mend the hurt in Jonah’s eyes on those cold mornings he was planting seeds before the sunrise.

They were together, because what else could they be. Neither of them had anybody else.

Their relationship had just became an odd sort of domestication, as would be found in couples who had been together since forever and had nothing new to say. Familiar enough to speak and for the time they did spend alone to be comfortable, they just didn’t talk about anything that mattered anymore – Jonah forcibly held his tongue on Rip’s hero complex, and Rip didn’t know how to fix things. But they were still together. Just about.

Rip was walking with a thunderstorm of thoughts from the Sheriff’s station, collar standing up to keep the night-time chill from biting at his cheeks after another late night, hoping Jonah would still be awake when he got back to their room – but knowing he wouldn’t be. It felt like a loss.

He didn’t hear the man’s approach, only his opening words.

“You’re making a mistake.”

A year ago, he would have recognised the voice. Six months ago, he would have made a positive identification before he even drew his weapon to the threat. Now? Rip just fired.

It tore through the hologram like paper, shattering the illusion for a moment before it restored itself, leaving nothing but a spent bullet in the dust. The silence of the night was broken by the sharp sound, even Rip flinching as he pulled the trigger. Looking around quickly, he twisted his head to one side in annoyance before he stepped into the shadows alongside the figure, walking ahead and knowing the hologram would follow.

He stopped far enough away that they wouldn’t be heard, Rip turning to the hologram with a less-than-sincere nod.

“Time Master Druce.”

“Captain Hunter.”

“- I’m not coming back,” Rip said quickly, cutting off his superior before the Time Master even had a chance to speak. It was a rushed defiance, Rip’s head tilting upwards and he shoved his hands deep into his pockets, forcing his back to be straight and his expression to betray no fear as he looked back. “I know I failed to complete my mission. That was my choice; I believed my orders were wrong. And I understand that not returning to the Vanishing Point must have caused trouble, that the Time Masters must be angry with me-”

Druce held up a hand, and Rip fell silent. He hated that he still obeyed even after months away from them.

“That’s not why I’m here, Captain. Yes, there are some who believe you have . . . _betrayed_ us,” Druce spoke carefully, as he always did. “I, however, am under the impression that the young will be just that. Your lack of experience and willingness to try and save these people shows _heart_ , not disobedience or treachery.”

Rip stiffened, “Do not treat me like a child.”

“I say this with the upmost respect, Captain Hunter. I truly believe you will be the greatest among us one day – but this was a mistake.”

“Saving a man’s life was not a mistake! Trying to save this town is _not_ a mistake!”

“And Jonah Hex?” Druce asked, head tilting to one side questioningly. “What is he in all of this?”

In between beats, Rip’s heart stopped. Tensing in every muscle, a blood-freezing, spine-tingling, palms-sweating fear swept through his body, sending all of his senses into overdrive and leaving him torn between freezing and shaking. He gasped out a breath without having an answer. After a few moments of staring over at the calm Time Master Druce, Rip chose to ignore it completely.

“Do I even want to know what you meant by that? And what you’re doing here?”

“You will not _want_ to hear it,” Druce replied, the look he cast at Rip almost sympathetic. It was the one he wore often when Rip was at the Academy – the one that said he knew something important that Rip did not. “In fact, I rather imagine you would rather I never told you at all, afterwards. But hear it you must.”

“Get on with it – because unless you’re planning on coming and dragging me from this era forcibly, nothing you do will have an impact,” Rip tilted his head to one side, the bite and confidence missing from his voice the past few months seeping back into his tone in an instant. “And even then, you’ll have a bloody good fight on your hands.”

“Oh, we’re not going to make you leave,” Druce replied evenly. “You’re going to chose to do that yourself.”

It didn’t even take Rip a full second to shake his head. “No. I wouldn’t . . . I won’t give up on this town. I won’t leave -”

He managed to catch himself before he said too much, slamming his mouth shut before the name could tumble out; Rip hated the certainty in Druce’s eyes, and it was throwing everything out of balance. Truthfully, it stirred something that felt like truth in his gut, something he was desperately hoping was mistaken shock or fear – he did not want to leave. Not today or ever.

Hands balled into furious fists, Rip shook his head at the world, tearfully admitting, “I love him.”

“I know. I know you do,” Druce said almost comfortingly. He walked towards Rip, a hologram hand landing on the weeping man’s shoulder. “That is why I’m here – to warn you. What you did when you disobeyed your orders, letting Moore live – it created a time debt, so to say. He lived, so everything has changed. It comes at a price.” He paused for a moment to make sure Rip was listening, seeing glassy confusion in the younger man’s eyes. Druce sighed, “Captain, I’m very sorry. In exactly four weeks from today, the town will be destroyed by the Stillwater Gang-”

“No . . .”

“All that remains to be seen is whether or not you will be with it when it falls,” Druce ignored his sigh of pain. “Calvert is doomed. But _he_ doesn’t have to be.”

Rip looked sharply up. “How?”

“You cannot save the town: that is a fact. But if you choose to leave before that day, he will go looking for you; it would spare you both from the destruction. Or you could wipe his memory, convince him to leave that way. Any number of things could work, as long as you are both gone before it begins,” he stepped away, “The other Time Masters believed it would be better to let this play out and let the slate be wiped clean. I came to warn you because I do believe you will be a great Time Master . . . I would much rather you survived this. If you won’t do it for yourself – do it for Jonah. _He_ can live. You could return to us, and he would live out the rest of his days, safe in this era. I knew you would do anything in your power to save those you love -that is why I came.”

“And if I don’t believe you?” Rip asked. “What if this is all a ploy to get me to return?”

“Take that chance, if you will. But it’s Jonah’s life you gamble with, too,” Druce slowly walked backwards. “You have a month. I trust you’ll make the right decision.”

He vanished. The hologram blipped out to leave Rip staring at an empty desert, tears running steadily down his face. With an angry cry, the frustration ripping its way out of his throat in an animal, inhuman sound, he spun around in a circle as if looking for Druce again, one hand reaching up to swipe through his hair, pulling at it. There wasn’t much hope in his heart that night.

*

“You’re gonna have to tell me what’s eating ya eventually, you know?”

Jonah slumped down opposite Rip in the Saloon, swiping a piece of bread from his partner’s plate and beginning to tear chunks of it with his fingers, eating the crumbs without looking up, giving Rip the room to think before he answered. Jonah was good at that, the asking-without-pressuring. Rip didn’t think he deserved it anymore.

“Nothing,” he answered quietly. Rip didn’t even mind the food-stealing; he had only been pushing his dinner around with his fork anyway. It had been a week since his talk with Druce. Nothing was right in the world. “I’m just tired.”

“Bullshit,” Jonah said immediately. He added after a moment, “You used to talk to me, Rip.”

“I still do.”

“Not about the important stuff,” he muttered. “It doesn’t matter what this is – guilt, something you’re hiding . . . no matter what that may be,” Jonah looked at his food and not Rip. He was often like this, introverted in emotion, afraid to be abandoned again. There was steel underneath that hurt, however, and he looked up with determination almost immediately. “I won’t judge. It won’t hurt me. I just can’t stand to watch you this way anymore, moping about like the world’s about to end.”

“And what if it is?” Rip snapped, tone nasty, cold. His eyes were black holes. “If I told you that the world was about to end – the sky was going to rain down on us – and it was all our fault? What would you say to that?”

“You’re from the future, I know that’s not true.”

“Yes, I’m from the future,” he replied darkly, drinking deep from his pint of ale. Rip was drinking more and more these days. There was a dangerous look in his eyes when he leaned back across the table, putting his cup down with such force that the liquid sloshed over the side, a loud crack emitting at the movement. “It gives me the knowledge that all of this is dead and gone, dust before I was even born. This is all gone. _You’re . . ._ gone.”

It seemed the word was chosen, if his second of hesitation before ‘gone’ was anything to go by. Jonah knew well enough to read between the lines – he was dead and buried, a ghost to Rip as this town was a graveyard. He imaged it fading into decay in Rip’s imagination every time he looked around, brow furrowing at the thought. He reached across to cover Rip’s shaking hand with his own. Jonah still wasn’t very good with words, but he was getting better at kindness.

“Come on home,” Jonah said quietly, getting to his feet. He paused by Rip’s chair, holding out a hand until his lover took it, pulling him up and pausing for a second, palms enclosed as if in oath, faces close enough to feel each other’s breath. “But come with me first.”

He led Rip outside, into the quiet of the street outside of the Saloon, walking until they stood side by side at the edge of town. Above them, the stars burned brightly, a million lights scattered across the blue – he figured Rip must have touched a fair few of those stars, with the way he carried their light when he smiled. Jonah wasn’t going to let him become a black hole.

“You need to rest, get your head on right. I know the future is a burden. But right now,” Jonah held out a hand, letting his fingertips dangle just in front of them. He looked back over, “Can you feel that breeze?”

In a skew of scepticism depicted on his face, Rip hesitated. “Why?”

“Just do it, asshole.”

Rip turned on heel to walk away, muttering as he went. “This is stupid.”

“What have you got to lose?”

The voice called after him flippantly, defiantly. It caught on the breeze it was calling his attention to and made Rip pause, frozen a few feet away, sand clouded around his boots from the force with which he had been walking, fast paced and angry. It kicked up dust, left the light hazy – even the glow on the edge of town before the vast darkness of the desert at night seemed to measure his mood.

Calvert was Rip’s beating heart; his soul. He had never felt like ‘home’ was a word he could attach to a particular place before – people, yes, but never a specific place in space and time. The Refuge was something shared with others, never his – the Time Masters Academy was as much a prison as a place to live, with all its rules and restrictions. Home had always been this elusive thing just out of reach.

Then he came here.

And it wasn’t a perfect town, far from it. There was a constant sound of fights and cows, it smelt to high heaven of manure and blood, and it was always on the verge of self-destruction. But – and there was that word keeping him here, the hesitation to leave a place when there was still that hanging doubt, that ‘but’ – it was also a good place. Even despite all that, the people were honest, they worked hard and _tried_. They fought, but they also danced at the Saloon. It might have smelled of blood, but he could also smell burning fires and grass. It was alive, truly.

As long as there was hope for that, he would hold onto it. It was his home, as was Jonah, in his own way. The person and the place, both here now – but not forever.

His head and heart were starting to hurt again, so he just resigned himself to having to enable Jonah and trudged back to where the other man stood.

“Everything,” he replied under his breath, and Jonah didn’t even want to question what that meant. He wanted to make the eye of the storm a moment of quiet, not kick up more dust, so he let that comment slide as Rip moved even as he said it, hand extending into the air. He turned to Jonah. “Now what?”

“Close your eyes. Can you feel the breeze?”

Through closed eyelids, Rip could see nothing – no light, the stars obscured; but there, brushing against his hand – yes, there was a breeze. It was light, cool without biting, weaving through his stretched out fingers and ghosting up his arm, leaving a trail of goosebumps in its wake. Although it was an admission leaving his lips wearily, laced with sarcasm, he nodded.

“Yes, I can feel the breeze. That’s what happens when you stand outside.”

He heard tutting to his right. Ignoring it, Jonah spoke on, “An on the breeze, what can you hear?”

Rip strained to listen, the effort of trying to focus out the constant whoosh of the wind itself making the world quiet around him, the sounds dancing their way to his ears, delicate in the way they drew his attention. There was talking. Distantly, the low braying of cows and horses in the fields around the town. From the Saloon behind him, there was a louder hum of people, the chipping of piano loudest of all, just like it had been his first night in town and every night since.

“Calvert,” he said finally, opening his eyes and twisting until Jonah was firmly in his sights. The other man was watching him with bright eyes, an understanding there that he did not deserve. Rip held his gaze as Jonah stepped closer, “I can hear Calvert.”

“And what does that mean?”

“I . . .” Rip blinked, then steadied, resigned to the truth. “It means I’m still outside instead of either drinking or sleeping.”

Jonah pushed. “C’mon, stop playin’ around now.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say! So why don’t you just _tell_ me, Jonah?”

“You can feel Calvert, y’can hear it – it’s there. It’s _real_ ,” Jonah said, and he was so close now all of the anger in Rip’s chest escaped him in a gasp, a sharp exhale at the proximity of the man he loved. All he wanted to do was close that distance, and breathe the air from Jonah’s lungs instead. But Jonah was still talking, so Rip listened, entranced. “This is not the future. It’s right here, right now – and as long as that stays the same, it means there’s hope.”

Rip choked on the breath that banished the gloom from his face: cracking, breaking , brimming over with emotion. He sucked it back between his teeth, eyes stinging in the breeze that carried the sounds of Calvert to them; he took several deep breaths and swiped a finger across his lips, lingering on his chin. He was getting tired of constantly feeling overwhelmed.

Rip stood stooped, as he did often, like life itself weighed his shoulders down to the ground; iron eyes cast towards the dust. Trembling fingers felt the scuff at his chin, and Jonah’s shadow joined his own once again at the sound.

“Are you alright?” Jonah was asking, walking forwards, and like clothes mended when they were worn through, his face was patched with concern to hide his hurt. A hand landed on Rip’s shoulder. “Rip . . .”

“I’m sorry,” he said, the words spilling out as fast as his thoughts raced. “I’m sorry, I’m – I haven’t been me, these past weeks. I don’t even know who I am, not since . . . not since Calvert. All that I thought I was – Time Master, soldier, killer – it all changed. And I – I don’t want to go back. I don’t want to lose it.”

“You haven’t lost anything yet, Rip.”

“No?” he asked hesitantly. Rip looked up through hooded eyes, uncertainty flickering in his gaze when he looked at his partner, the answer he needed and yet feared a breath away – and out there in that single word, that single breath.

He thanked the stars themselves when Jonah smiled his lopsided smile and gently shook his head, agreeing, “No.”

A smile cracked Rip’s dry lips. Relief flooding his system, he let it take a hold of his face as he glanced briefly skywards, and yet the stars that always brought him comfort meant little to him now. For so long, he had waited to go out there and explore the universe, to escape a broken world – the sky had been a solstice, and now he found it in the ground beneath his feet instead, in the seeds Jonah diligently planted, in the smell of petrichor, in a town half-lit by hazy lights through air filled with dust.

Home was never a fixed place, not for him. And it had found a new place to root.

Calvert _was_ real. It was there – he could touch it, breathe it, feel it – but for how long? The thought never left him, that this was all temporary and that the promised flood was coming, that the town was doomed beyond saving – but it didn’t seem as concrete as before, the threat that faced them. As soon as the words had left Druce’s lips, some fundamental part of him had believed them, and despaired, for why would his old friend – why would a Time Master – lie?

But Jonah was right in a way that only he could be. Where Rip had been trained to see the entire universe, to weigh the consequences of each breath on the timeline that was ever-changing, Jonah saw only what was in front of him.

It wasn’t meant as a sleight as he thought it – he thought so often of the bigger picture that he missed what lay plainly for him to see, and Rip knew it, and knew it was a flaw. Jonah took the world as it was – not what it could be or would be – if they needed food, he planted seeds; if it rained, he went inside; if they were under attack – he fought. The man’s simplicity was in guts and blood and reality, alive in a way that screamed for attention by defying the next moment by living only in the present, making time wait its turn in his life.

Suddenly, it all made sense in Rip’s mind, plain and clear, the way Jonah saw the world borrowed to him to bring him peace for that shining moment of clarity.

No man, no matter how powerful, knew the future beyond all doubt. Not even the Time Masters.

Druce could promise destruction – but Jonah had concrete hope. Calvert was real. It still stood. While the future was a threat undelivered, the present offered so much more – the very ground he stood on.

It was more than enough to fight for.

“Rip?” Jonah was giving him that look again, the worried head tilt and soft voice no one else heard. In that dim haziness, Rip saw him in perfect light. “What’s goin’ on in that head of yours? Huh?”

Rip turned his gaze to him, and loved him more than words could say. “How grateful I am that you planted seeds and waited for it to rain.”

There was a few seconds stunned pause before Jonah chuckled. “Sap.”

“I was trying for ‘optimist’,” Rip replied, but there was a smile on his face, too. “At least for today.”

“And tomorrow?”

“Keep reminding me.”

He said it with a light tone, but the words rung between them anyway, desperation leaking into the warmth of his voice. Rip was still staring at Jonah intently, but now he was genuine. He knew he would forget hope soon enough. But if he could stand there now and feel it, he also knew he could do it again, if Jonah was always there to remind him.

To his credit, the once-outlaw nodded sincerely.

“Always.”

Rip kissed him then, and hoped the smell of leather and sweat and dirt that he breathed in; that the taste of Jonah’s lips warm on his own stayed with him in the days to come. If hope had a place in the world, it was in that moment, kissing a man he loved on the edge of town, making promises and fighting a darkness swirling in the future.

*

He woke to Jonah’s breath against his ear, dust floating lazily in the sunlight streaming through their open window, just a breath of breeze accompanying it. For the first time in a long week, Rip Hunter woke smiling. For the first time in even longer, he woke with hope for the future.

Jonah’s arm was wrapped tightly around his shoulder. It was warm, almost too warm with the heat of the morning already starting to rise, but Rip could handle a few moments sweating in place of the frostiness he had woken to the past few weeks. Better a warm bed than an empty one. Careful not to wake the sleeping man, Rip turned away from the world, wanting it to stay away for just a while longer, so he could stay warm in Jonah’s arms. The town was out there, he was glad it was – but god, he wished sometimes it would vanish and just give him a moment to catch his breath.

Sometimes, the world lets you win.

Rip lay in Jonah’s arms, letting the sun warm his back as gentle breath brushed his own, just watching his lover sleep. Unmarred by worry, Jonah’s face was relaxed in sleep, younger somehow, the scar Rip had stopped noticing there, and he reached a hand to trace it with his knuckles, fingers barely touching the skin. He was so beautiful.

“Creep.”

The word, low in Jonah’s throat and thick with sleep, was the first sign Rip got that the other man was awake and knew he was watching him sleep.

The second was the slow smile that turned Jonah’s lips up.

The third was the sunlight in Jonah’s eyes as they opened, reflected in his iris’, the rising sun shining perfectly there for a second before he half closed them again, because no man could hold the sun for too long.

“I-”

Words caught in Rip’s throat, trapped there, itching at the base of his tongue, wanting to be leased into the world. He needed to say it; he _wanted_ to say it. The thrumming of his heart as it picked up paced and the way his mind could never quite be quiet stopped him. Whispering at the fringes of his consciousness said that saying it would only make it hurt more when things fell apart – whether that be through death or heartache, he still was not sure.

No matter what he felt, Rip’s fundamental inability to just let himself live in the moment with the pressing weight of history upon him would never let him say those words. Not here, not now.

Perhaps not ever.

_Calvert is doomed._

“It’s alright,” Jonah breathed back. It could only have been a second since Rip lapsed into strangled silence. A brush of wet lips against his forehead followed, messy and half in his hair, and yet all he needed, as the arm around him tightened. Then, he was looking into Jonah’s eyes again, and there was no worry, no disappointment, no doubt in the other man’s. Just a steady assurance, constant as a burning candle. “I know, Rip. I know.”

“I should . . . I’m sorry, I don’t -”

“Don’t be. I understand why it’s hard for you, with that head of yours, with all those things you know,” Jonah tapped Rip’s temple. There was a sigh, almost undetectable in his words. It was overpowered by his sleepy tongue as it kept talking. “I never expected this. Not that first night what I stopped your ass getting beat-”

“I had it all under control.”

“Of course,” Jonah smirked. “I believe you. But I didn’t think this would happen then, or for a long time after. It took time. We’ve got time still. It doesn’t . . . it doesn’t matter’t me how long it takes you to say it – if you _never_ say it. You’re _here_. That matters. And I know.”

Rip’s voice was quiet again, barely a whisper. “I don’t deserve you.”

“Unfortunately, that ain’t true. I think we deserve each other, whatever peace men like us get.”

But before the dismissal was finished, the self directed derision in Jonah’s tone familiar and now so out of place to Rip, the former Time Master was shaking his head. Although his mind was the problem here, was what kept him at arms length from everyone and everything, it was screaming in synch with his heart right then; so he let his body talk. Hands reaching up, Rip cupped Jonah’s face – thumb rubbing his jaw, eyes locked, he tried to make him understand.

“How can you not see?”

“See what?”

“You’re everything.”

The admission came quickly, to a sharp intake of breath from Jonah in response, eyes widening in shock. Underneath his hands, the face went slack with shock, eyes widening for a second. Jonah didn’t believe the words, there was too much dark in his past for that, but to Rip, the only sun he needed was Jonah. He was the world. He was rain in a desert, a stranger who saved the life of the new idiot in town, all of the best of humanity wrapped up in a long coat and smirk. And he loved him. He loved him so much an ache filled his chest. And he knew it meant nothing.

_Calvert is doomed._

Rip kissed him then, hand sliding from Jonah’s jaw to grip his hair, feeling the kiss returned after a pause. Desperate suddenly to not lose this moment, that if he could only press them tightly enough together that the world could not tear them apart, they could stay in that bed forever, bathed in sunlight. It wasn’t soft, but rough, like he wanted to claw a space inside Jonah’s ribs to live beside his heart, pulling at his hair, at his hips, breathing in the smell of him as Rip closed his eyes to the feeling, always moving closer, pressing together.

“You’re _everything_ , Jonah. You’re the world,” he heard himself mumbling in gasps where he sucked in breaths like a drowning man, although they were surrounded by desert. He sounded drunk, though his words were honest. A madman, a poet, a lover, he found the words kept coming, quickly, truly, assurances to hold back the sun. “You’re worth them all. I’m here. I’m yours. You saved me, Jonah. You’re enough. You’re enough. You’re enough.”

He tried to drown out all of his fears, but they raged louder than he could whisper promises, and soon his own lips fell silent.

_Calvert is doomed. Calvert is doomed. Calvert is doomed._

_But **he** doesn’t have to be._

*

That afternoon two men stood in a field at the edge of town planting seeds.

In silence, they arrived, one taking up a shovel while the other followed in his footsteps, scattering a handful of seeds in the freshly dug holes. Although the sun beat down on them vigorously, hats turned up against it, they showed no sign of discomfort as they worked – the smell of dirt hung around them, sweat mingled in there, and neither ones face ever broke into as much as a frown. They stayed side by side. It was not a magical thing, the seeds did not suddenly take bloom and grow in seconds, it was not a blaring signal that they were fighting back – there was nothing but fresh holes.

But, eventually, something would grow.

After a few hours of working alone, the only sounds the other’s breathing, a set of footsteps approached the workers from the west, from the direction the town lay in. Brow creasing for the first time in confusion, Jonah looked up: the figure approaching began as a dark smudge growing steadily larger as it grew closer, and by the time they were within distance to put a name to the face, Sally the Barmaid was standing across the field, hoe in hand.

She was dressed for work, fresh stains on her sleeves from the bar; but the sun was on her face for him to see her look over at them as she arrived – and the smile there was unmistakable. She spared them that much, that look of appreciation – then turned to the ground, and like them, started digging.

Jonah turned to look at Rip, wondering if his boyfriend thought this was as strange as he did – but he found Rip with that half-smirk on his face, hands slung deep into his pockets. Noticing Jonah’s gaze, he shrugged, but there was mischief in his gaze as he turned back to placing seeds in the ground.

Blinking, head turning back from one to another, Jonah felt something stir in his chest. For days, weeks now, he had been out here all day – alone. Always by himself, planting seeds for everyone. Just for someone else to be here; it felt like . . . something foreign to him, half-forgotten. The closest thing he could place it to was sunlight. It was like standing in the warm for the first time in years, letting the sun’s rays soak into his bones and fill his blood.

Still not sure what was happening, he turned back to the ground, his shovel striking true. It sang with soil as he worked quietly for a few more minutes, trying to shake the feeling that he was out of the loop of something – he would just ask Rip, but the look on the other man’s face promised that this was not a bad thing, so he trusted him, and kept digging.

The sound of more footsteps ten minutes later made him freeze.

This cacophony was louder than Sally’s steps, thunderous in their volume, promising not a single person, but many – and above that din, rising at it got closer – voices. People talking to one another, men and women, children, dogs barking even in the sound – and there – _laughter._

Slowly, Jonah straightened from his stooped stance as the footsteps and voices got louder. He was facing away from them, looking at Rip, who had eyes only for him. The sun blazed behind him, and Rip was smiling as Jonah half-collapsed on his shovel, unashamed of the tears that he found in his eyes at the sound. He could hear Rip’s song now: finally, clearly, resonating through the earth itself and making itself known in the footsteps of strangers.

When Jonah finally turned, he saw Calvert walking towards him. The entire town marched, shovels in hands, families and the old, the young and the drifters, even their mean old landlady. Some smiled as they came to work in the field beside him, others looked serious, but more often than not, they called out ‘hello’ and set to work laughing.

Soon, the field was full with people, and the seeds were being sown in a day what would have taken him a week to do alone.

Speechless, Jonah turned to find Rip again. Still framed in light, the Sheriff’s eyes were warmer than the light behind him as he caught Jonah’s eyes, reaching a hand to his hat and tipping it in his direction, smile on his lips. Jonah felt his own break into a grin. Before he knew it, he was laughing too, a brash sound, at the ridiculousness of this, tears making their way down his face as he looked around him. He wonder if this was what home was – if this was what _hope_ was – and found that either way, this moment was never going to leave him.

Rip had done this, he knew. Called the town and asked for help, to show he meant what he had said, that they would get through this. To apologise for things he had said and things he hadn’t. Jonah started walking before he was aware his feet were even moving, and met Rip in the middle of the field, grabbing him by the collar and kissing him.

No one stopped working, or speaking, or laughing. No one looked over. Nothing exploded, nothing happened, nothing went wrong.

At least for today.

*

Two more weeks passed in the same way, but things were better now. Jonah and Rip were together in the crazy, giddy way they had been when they first got together again, and the former Time Master seemed to move out of the shadow that had been passing over him for the weeks before. Or, it did on some days.

On others, Rip would fall into silences that lasted for hours, something always on his mind, something he wouldn’t talk about. Jonah tried to ask, but it never worked. In the end, he was just as present as he could be – if Rip needed someone to pull him back into the world, he did it. If he needed time alone with all those plaguing thoughts? Jonah gave him that, too. All they could do was try.

More often than not, his favourite parts of the day were waking up with Rip again. Closely followed by afternoons in the field, planting with all of the town.

Their bliss that day lasted a morning, before, as usual, with the sound of thundering hooves, life caught up. Never far away, the threat of the Stillwater Gang loomed – and if not that, Rip felt in his heart as he turned towards the approaching rider, silhouetted against the sun to obscure their identity, there would always be something coming. Some threat, some foe, something waiting in the wings to descend upon them all and devour them whole. It was the way he lived his life: one thing to the next, constantly living in dread of the way where whatever semblance of happiness he had clawed together was taken away.

With a cloud of dust acting as a smoke-screen even as Rip and Jonah raced in situ towards the commotion, the townspeople a tide against them in a panicked retreat in the opposite direction, the rider dropped something into the dirt at the edge of their field, landing with a dull, ominous thud. It was an empty sound. Before they reached the fence, Rip vaulted it and put a hand to his brow to try and see who was already riding away – almost falling over the body at his feet.

Jonah knelt beside it right away, placing a hand to an already cold neck and finding no trace of a pulse. He shook his head slightly, and Rip swore aloud, turning in a rage and kicking the nearest fence post.

“What happened?”

From his kneeling position, Jonah shrugged. “Gunshot, looks like. Recognise him?”

“I’ve seen him around town, he’s one of ours,” Rip replied, glancing over the body quickly. His eyes didn’t linger there long – they couldn’t. He saw enough from that: dried blood at the corner of the man’s mouth, frozen in bubbles in a few places – he had lived after being shot long enough to choke on his own blood. The thought made Rip shake with fury, about to close his eyes to block out the sight when he noticed a piece of paper in the victims pocket, pointing. “What’s that? His pocket.”

Pulling free a piece of paper, torn at the edges and half stained with blood, Jonah scanned its contents, eyes widening a fraction. That was the only reaction of shock he showed, quickly masking it with cold anger, standing and silently holding the paper out to Rip, half-shaking his head as he put it to his boyfriend’s chest.

“Don’t ask me to read it.”

That was all Jonah said, turning with a low noise of anger, coming from deep in his throat. He paced a few feet away, one hand clenched into a fist at his side. As he turned to the paper now in his hands, Rip’s stomach lurched – he knew in his gut it held nothing good. It felt heavy in his palms. Slowly, he turned it over to see the writing, reading aloud in a loud, but faltering voice.

“People of Calvert . . . this is your last warning. Your little mutiny was brave, but it was also stupid, and in vain. It ends now. Whether – whether you like it or no; regardless of what you’re King Fool of a Sheriff says-” he broke off, silenced, jaw clenching. Rip felt his mind behind to spiral out, but his lips kept moving, even as blind eyes read them, already thinking of how to hurt the men who had sent it. He swallowed. “By the time the moon hangs full in the sky, we will have your town, one way or another. This is your last chance to lay down your arms, kill your false leaders, and submit to our control. To refuse is to die. This man will be the first of many – one a day until you concede, and the streets of Calvert run red with your blood. Within a month, it will be covered in sand and you all will be dead, like you had never been there at all. Resistance is futile.” He creased the paper in his hands, throwing it to the ground at his feet, looking up to see the horrified faces of all the town looking back and feeling empty. “Signed, the Stillwater Gang.”

With a dark heart, Rip couldn’t even react. He needed to think, but under their gazes, all looking to him for reassurance or as a saviour, he could barely breathe. So, he ran. Pushing past the people who had assembled to help them in hope, he felt the feeling turn sour in his mouth as he walked back to Calvert alone.

*

“We have to do something.”

“I know.”

“We can’t let them do this-”

“God damn it, Jonah, I _know_ ,” Rip snapped, voice raised to a shout as he stood, slamming his palms against the table he was leaning against at the station. His deputy stood behind him, silenced for a moment as Rip turned with anger, mouth forming words he was too angry to stay, fists clenching before he regained composure. “We’re not letting them get away with this, not by any means – but we have to think about the lives we can still save, Jonah. If we fight back now, there will be consequences.”

“ _Damn_ the consequences, Rip!”

And there Jonah was, the still pool the moment after a stone had been cast into the centre, shaking and full of ripples. Raking a hand through his short, bristly hair, he stood facing Rip, the whites of his eyes showing more than usual and knuckles pale in his anger. Again, there was a shift between them, and it left Rip wondering if they were ever going to be on the same page again.

Before today, Rip had been the one ready to fight, and Jonah content with planting seeds. Now, it was Jonah seeing red with shaking fists, ready to go out into the night with a gun and a grudge to fight and – most likely – die.

Rip shook his head. It had been something he could pretend wasn’t real before . . . things were going their way, the Stillwater Gang were at the back of his mind, and he believed that together, they might just be able to hold fast to this town. But now Druce’s words were back louder than ever. Now there was real blood on his hands, and the violence coming wasn’t just a possibility, a sense of dread in the pit of his stomach – it was real.

The Stillwater Gang would raze Calvert to the ground, of that Rip had no doubt. Druce had said as much – but words were nothing without proof, so he had lingered long enough to see _this_ – a death to mark the start of Calvert’s final days.

If it were a western movie, like those on the archives he watched once, this would be the moment the town rallied together and took up arms against the gang, ordinary people fighting back until the Stillwater Gang was ran out of town, and justice returned to the streets. A nice sentiment, but the harsh reality was that all that would happen if the people of Calvert tried to fight was that they would _die_.

This wasn’t a movie, there was no glorious end to all of this, no escape, no plan, no _time_ \- and Rip’s heart was breaking.

Even hours after the body was dropped at their feet, he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t _think_ -

_Calvert is doomed. But he doesn’t have to be._

Could he do it? Walk away from this town – this town which had given him so much, which had carved out a space in his chest where his heart was and called itself home? Leave it to the future he had been warned of, to burn, to die, to fall to ash? Could he do that when there was a chance – a small one, maybe, a mad one, more of a hope than a chance – that Druce was wrong, and that he could save it by staying?

Rip looked at Jonah, and knew that he could.

“Give it a few days,” Rip found himself saying, weakly. He walked forward, placing a comforting hand on Jonah’s shoulder, leaning forward just enough that their heads touched. Jonah’s dark eyes were hurting, that much he could see. “We have a week from today until the full moon the letter referenced. Time is precious. Wait, see what happens – it’s better than going out without a plan and dying tonight.”

“And if someone else dies while we’re waiting?” Jonah questioned, frustration rippling his brow, “What then?”

“We bear it, like we do everything else. Many more could die in an uncalculated attack.”

“At least that’d be their choice!”

“I’m the Sheriff, they gave me that office,” Rip said darkly. “I’m doing the best I can; trying to keep as many people alive as possible – this is how they survive, you’ve got to see that . . . They put this in _my_ hands, so I’m saying we wait. At least for now.”

Jonah stepped back, eyes narrowing. Rip had never pulled rank like that before.

“And if I disagree?”

Cracks appeared in their image, once so perfect in their eyes; Jonah stepped back again. Although he still faced Rip, everything that had been open about him before – the way he stood, his eyes where they searched for answers, the honest set of his jaw – it closed off before Rip’s eyes. Jonah stood tall; still, angry. And it was so easy for his quick mind to put pieces together: he knew the facts as they stood where Jonah only knew half of the story, giving him all the cards he needed to start sowing a back-up plan, a way to ensure that no matter what, Jonah survived this.

It started by making the other man hate him, or at least to shatter the perfection they had shared together. After this, the first blow, it was just a matter of applying pressure.

“I’m really hoping you don’t,” Rip admitted, eyes darting back to Jonah’s. Manipulating already, he knew how to make Jonah hold his peace for now – and to piss him off just enough that a distance emerged between them. He had a choice between Jonah’s life and his heart. It was an easy one to make. “I need you by my side on this, Jonah, you more than anyone else. You said you’d be my Deputy because _you_ didn’t want to make these decisions. So _I_ have.”

“Hey, now-”

“It’s true. I’m not blaming you – but this is how it is. You’re either with me or you’re not now, Jonah. I need someone by my side who is going to back me up,” Rip closed the distance between them again, forcing Jonah to meet his gaze. “Is that you?”

Jonah nodded, but in his gaze for the first time was a hint of distrust, a shade of anger directed at Rip, brewing there behind his iris’ – a fracture in the glint of his eyes, which had just that morning been so filled with love.

When Jonah turned to leave the station mumbling about going to get a drink, Rip let him go. He should have followed him. He wanted to, desperately, to call Jonah back and give back some of the hope the other man had given to him , pouring his affection and light into Rip until there was barely enough left for himself. But there was a knot of worry in the pit of his stomach screaming _Calvert is doomed,_ and that, he could no longer ignore.

*

Jonah felt _sick_. It was centred in his stomach, a hollowness that overwhelmed him, like his insides were diseased and dying, slowly building up through his body to choke him. That man – that man was _dead_ , because of them. Even as the town stood with them to plant and try to rebuild, just as he started to believe they could do this – death just followed him around, at his heels, snatching away hope before it even had time to take root.

He couldn’t win. Even as he tried to step back, to play safe, spending all those hours breaking his back planting seeds: and to what end? It was utterly useless. Those crops would never get the chance to grow, because the Stillwater Gang would wipe the town of Calvert off the map before they had the chance. He had wasted so much time . . .

It was stupid to think he could do anything other than fight. Blood on his knuckles and the taste of copper in his mouth - that was what he did best. It was visceral, primal, fighting ‘til he fell down only to stand up and do the same again – that was who he was, that was what he did. To think otherwise was a delusion.

Planting seeds? Spending hours in sunlight lying around when he should have been out there, gun in hand, killing as many men as thought to stand against him? Only . . . Rip, he had been the one to change things. To make him want to be better and find another way.

“Damn him,” Jonah cursed. He downed another drink, aching for the revulsion in this throat at the taste, eyes blurring as he waved for another. This was the best he could hope for tonight; to drink himself stupid to stop himself from doing something worse.

It wasn’t goddamned _fair_.

It wasn’t fair that the Stillwater Gang tricked him here in the first place, using him to find Moore. It wasn’t fair that he’d happened to be in the Saloon on the same day Rip Hunter was getting his teeth kicked in. It wasn’t fair that Rip followed him around for weeks afterwards, with his optimism and his laughter and his light. It wasn’t fair that he had fallen in love.

And it certainly wasn’t fair that they were going to be torn apart by the Stillwater Gang.

He saw what was coming, plain as day; the Gang would kill, they would fight, they would try, one of them would walk away. All the love in the world didn’t matter when there were bullets being shot at your feet and blood on your hands and life stood in the way of you being together. He could love Rip forever, vow to spend the rest of his days holding true to that – but that relied on a world that let them live, where there was no conflict, nothing to drive them apart. Such a world wasn’t true, not for them, not now.

Back then . . . the coldness in Rip’s body as he pulled rank was enough to force Jonah back a few steps; enough to stop his beating heart. The argument was avoidable, that he knew. But he had just been so – he could feel the blood in his ears, the tension in his bones; a man was dead, and he couldn’t think straight. Rip was probably right, but he didn’t have the right to tell Jonah to stand down, not after everything _he_ had done in the name of stopping the gang.

It set an itch in his body that he couldn’t scratch. Unfortunately, the world cared little for what was fair, and he was left sitting alone with a half empty glass, wondering if this was the moment – and there was always a moment, a turning point from which everything pivoted – that they couldn’t recover from.

*

On the first day, they found a body on the main street before dawn had even broken.

Screams beckoned Jonah and Rip from their bed, where they lay close but not entangled as had become their habit, before the sun had risen in the sky; the former was still half-drunk as he stumbled out of bed, throwing on mismatched clothes, a few minutes behind Rip in leaving. The Sheriff was out of bed and dressed in seemingly a heartbeat, leaving Jonah wondering if Rip had been lying awake, and for how long. It had taken him a long time to fall asleep that night, too, returning home to find Rip already asleep, with no chance to even try to talk things through.

Jonah had thought it would be okay, that they always had the morning. But like all else, the Stillwater Gang stole even that chance from them with a bullet and a body.

“Who is it?” Jonah asked, stepping past the small crowd that had gathered, the farmers risen early to plant again and other people with professions that warranted being awake at that hour, which was fortunately few. The threat already lingered over the town – the last thing they needed was mass-panic. Some looked up at his arrival, but it was his crouching Sheriff who grimly replied.

“It’s Dorris.”

And true enough, their landlady lay in the street, eyes closed and body drained of colour. She was still a hard woman, someone who was cruel on occasion and spared no love for either him nor Rip, but it still made him wince to see her dead and left out in the street. He wouldn’t wish that on anybody. It felt like a slap in the face. Jonah knew this was the Stillwater Gangs’ way of showing that they were untouchable, but that nobody in Calvert was beyond their reach; they could kill someone in the same building as the Sheriff just as easily as someone on the outskirts.

“Shit,” he cursed aloud. “How did they get to her? She sleeps a floor down from us.”

Rip looked tired as he shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t think . . .”

Jonah was about to put voice to the dark thought that struck him, but stopped mid-sentence, not wanting to validate the worry by speaking it. It was absurd, ridiculous; his own warped psyche wanting him to think the worst of people.

But Rip caught the hesitation anyway, and Jonah never did learn to lie to him.

“What?”

“That someone in the town could be working for them? That not everybody here is on our side . . . that maybe the Stillwater Gang has an inside man in Calvert.”

“Impossible,” Rip breathed. But in his eyes, there was a glimmer of doubt, and Jonah’s stomach sank like a stone even as the Sheriff ploughed on with shocked defiance. “Why would . . . they’re going to _destroy_ the town, burn it to the ground or else run it on pain and – and _blood_ – who would want that? People . . . people can’t be all bad. I refuse to believe it.”

“Not all,” Jonah shook his head. “But _some_. Enough. One, to help them do this.”

“I don’t . . . there has to be a way around this . . .”

Badge gleaming in the morning sun, glinting gold and shining as he turned, Rip walked away muttering to himself, the smell of despair woven into him. Jonah opened his mouth to speak, but closed it. Something was wrong with Rip, that much he could tell. Rip’s mood swing was back in full force: as if in the space of a day, he had forgotten how to hope and the thoughts that didn’t seem to let the Sheriff rest had returned.

But Rip just walked away with worried words he would never explain, leaving the body in the dirt and Jonah to deal with it. So he asked some of the nearby men to help carry the body to the border of town, their field of planted seeds beside him, grabbed a shovel, and started to dig.

The sun hung midway in the sky by the time the grave was finished, nothing but a hole in the ground. Nobody came to mourn Old Dorris, she had few friends and more enemies. She went to her grave with only Jonah to mark her, as he heaped the dirt back over her in a warm and dark embrace, drawing a cross in the sand at the head of the grave with his boot. It was the best they could do.

She was put to rest beside the man they buried yesterday, the first victim of the Stillwater Gang’s blood feud against the town, although his grave was already covered in sand, and even now Jonah could not recall his exact location. There would be more bodies along the fence to the field before the week was out, that he knew, but it was the uncertainty over the number that worried him.

To have a choice was unusual to him, and he found himself torn apart by it.

They could rally the town against the Gang and more likely than not, die. They could secede to the Gang’s will and let them take over, in which case, some of them would die – he and Rip, definitely – and the others would live out their days in servitude to the gang in one way or another. They would not live peacefully or happily, but, they _would_ live. Or, last of all, they could keep waiting like Rip wanted to, widen the line of unmarked graves, and see what happened when the Stillwater Gang came for them all in six days. Again, death seemed the most likely outcome to that particular scenario.

In all occurrences, he died. Rip died. Others died. Some of the town lived – although life under the boot of the tyrannical gang was no life at all. Try as he might, Jonah could find no gambit, no way to out manoeuvre the gang. All he knew was that he would rather die fighting that kneeling in the dirt, and if there was such a thing as blessings, that Rip would be at his side when he died; that he wouldn’t go alone.

The fact that dying together was the best scenario he could imagine didn’t inspire much in the way of hope.

*

On the second day, Rip found the body alone. It was a relief.

Although they had arrived together, once they were at the station, Jonah had been as a caged tiger. He stalked the small station, pacing its walls over and over in a repetitive pace, his dull footsteps ringing in the space and getting under Rip’s skin, occasionally hitting the bars of the cells they had in the room, a few criminals inside. Some were Stillwater men. They leered back, one even going as far as to laugh at them.

“You’re dead, _Sheriff_ ,” he jeered mockingly as Jonah passed him, moving to lean against the bars. The man had a plain, freckled face, and bristly hair. Something struck Rip as being familiar when he looked up from his desk at the sound. “Tick-Tock. Time’s running out.”

“I assure you, if I have an abundance of anything, it is _time_ ,” Rip bit back, tone steel, hoping the lie was convincing enough. He felt more than saw Jonah’s eyes on him, felt their burn on his skin. But the man only laughed, icily, and he felt his stomach flip.

“ _Psh_. My boys got more guts than you, and he’s a bigger baby than your boyfriend here.”

He looked towards Jonah at the last part, lip curled into a sneer. The ex-Bounty Hunter growled. Jonah moved forward, quick as a whip, and rapped his gun against the criminals knuckles against the bars, sending the man back. He hissed, holding his hands.

“Fucking – I’ll kill you!”

“Hard to do that behind bars.”

“Then let me out and face me like a man instead of his _bitch_ ,” the man challenged, spitting on the ground. There was a dangerous glint in his eyes, knowing the threat had hit home when Jonah surged forward, held back only by the even quicker Rip, who moved to stand in front of the bars. He shot his once-love a look, and despite everything that had changed between them, Jonah nodded and stepped back.

Rip turned back to the cell, eyes cool, tone ice. “What is your name?”

“McCarty. Patrick McCarty – remember it. It’s good to know the name of the man who’s gonna kill you.”

“And what is your son’s name?”

“What?”

“Your _son_ ,” Rip ground out. Seemingly unimpressed by Mr. McCarty’s threats, he crossed his hands behind his back, fingernails digging into his palms where he gripped them with anger, knuckles white. It was just enough to draw blood, wet beneath his nails and leaking a coppery smell into the air. “The one you seem to think so little of. What is his name?”

“Billy,” the man replied, and Rip suddenly remembered how they had found him. The boy in the barn who chose not to shoot. A slow, satisfied smile crossed his face. “What the fuck is it to you?”

“You’ve got a brave, smart boy,” Rip replied smoothly, smile only deepening at the look of rage which erupted on the man’s face. “Smarter than you. He chose his battles well when he let me walk away . . . and now here you are.”

The man spluttered for words for a moment, struck silent. When he did find his words, they ripped from his throat in a contorted rage, spewing such violent it chilled Rip’s blood.

“That . . . that little _bastard_! I’ll kill him. Just you wait ‘til I get out of here, and I _will_ , my boys are comin’ for me any day now – I’ll kill you, then him. That little punk will die for this. Or maybe I’ll kill him first and make you watch, Sheriff. See how you like how I pick my battles then.”

Rip stared. Although locked away, McCarty was frothing at the mouth with his anger, pacing, slamming his hands against the bars inches in front of Rip’s face. Worst of all – the Sheriff believed him. This man would kill his son, the kid who had spared him, should he ever get out.

Calmly, Rip pulled the cell key from his pocket.

“Rip?”

He heard Jonah’s voice and dismissed it. It was far away, insignificant compared to the roaring of his blood in his ears. Rip opened the cell, clapping the man in cuffs before he even had chance to fight back, swiftly kicking another prisoner who came forward in the knee as he yanked Billy’s Father out of the cell. When he slammed the door behind him, it clanged shut with a sound of finality.

“What are you doing? What do you-”

McCarty, hands cuffed in front of him, tried to swing at Rip, but Jonah was there in a second to catch his hands before they could fall on their intended target. Hands on the man’s shoulders to restrain him, Jonah looked at Rip once more, eyes questioning and scared.

Rip said nothing, grabbing the man again and shoving him ahead of them both, as he and Jonah walked outside the station. Ignoring the man’s stumbling to push him forward more each time, completely disregarding his shouts and questions which were drawing a crowd, Rip blankly marched them in a funeral procession to the main street of town, stopping at it’s heart – the bar.

Faces looked at him from all sides now, and Rip was pleased. He wanted people to know. To talk. If a mole existed in the town, he wanted to Stillwater Gang to hear about this. They had sent their message in blood the other day –

Now it was _his_ turn.

Kicking Patrick McCarty to his knees in front of him, Rip pulled his gun and aimed it at the man’s head.

“ _Rip_!”

The voice was cutting, sharp, accompanied by a jerking of his arm as it was ripped away from the intended victim’s head. Jonah wheeled him around to face him, trying to take the gun from him, although Rip resisted, taking a few measured steps back to stand free. He could see the desperation in Jonah’s eyes; the shock, the disbelief. That was good. The more out of love Jonah fell, the better for both of them.

Rip felt dead inside.

“Let me past, Jonah.”

“No, for God’s sake, stop this-”

“I’m the Sheriff and you will do as I say.”

“The _fuck_ I will!” Jonah shouted, closing the distance again until he was in Rip’s face, closing in. And despite the shock, despite the disgust about what Rip wanted to do – even now, when he didn’t deserve it, there was empathy in Jonah’s eyes. Softly, he lowered his voice as he leaned closer, pleading, words running into each other in a stream. “This isn’t you; this isn’t how we do things. We’re not murderers, Rip. There’s another way, I promise, I _promise_ – remember Moore? We _saved_ him. You showed me there was a better way.”

Rip raised his gaze to Jonah’s. “This is happening _because_ of Moore – because I was weak. Not again. Stand aside.”

“We don’t kill!”

“We do now!” Rip hollered right back, shoving Jonah aside and shouting out to the curious crowd. He stood tall, brandishing his gun, but he couldn’t block out Jonah’s ragged breathing behind him, or his pleas to stop. “The Stillwater Gang,” he started, looking around. “Are _slaughterin_ g us. Killing our friends and neighbours in cold blood because they think we will be scared into submission. They’re killing us like cattle! I say . . . I say we even the score; prove to them it will not work.”

He lowered the gun to the prisoner’s head, resting it against his coarse hair. Billy’s Father was sobbing, heaped on the ground in front of the crowd, who were now murmuring words of dissent and agreement, rising to a thunderous noise. The prisoners’ sobs were choked as he begged for his life, and Rip felt nothing.

“This is madness,” Jonah said again, appearing at his elbow to appeal again. Rip saw Jonah’s gaze fall to his finger, taunt on the trigger, so this time he did not risk taking the gun away. Instead he stood, moving so that he was standing as in front of Rip as he could get, and spoke.

“You told a little boy – that man’s _son_ – that there was a better way than killin’. You stood in front of him and asked him not to shoot you. He _didn’t_. You _believed_ in that, Rip, I know you did . . .”

“I can’t stop it, Jonah,” Rip admitted, tearfully looking up. The gun shook in his hand. “I thought . . . when I said that, I thought we were safe. I thought we had a chance.”

Jonah cut in, “-We _do_.”

“No,” Rip shook his head fiercely. There was warmth on his cheeks down, Jonah’s face obscured through a haze, the huddled man before his gun still begging for his life. It meant nothing, they were all going to be dead in less than a week anyway. How could the world make sense at a time like that? “No, no, I’m sorry. But we don’t. I . . . I can’t stop it, we can’t . . .”

The frank, broken certainty in his tone shocked Rip. It was his fear, the one he had kept to himself, but from the array of shocked and scared faces of Calvert around him, and the heartbeat where Jonah’s face froze, now they all knew it too. For as strong as hope was, standing in a field, fear burned just as bright and fierce, and caught among the town, standing in the dirt.

It took Jonah seconds to recover, but then his own voice turned honest.

“Then killin’ one man isn’t gonna make much of a difference, now, is it?”

When Rip closed his eyes, tears fell with them. Even the ground seemed to shift beneath his feet as he shook, pitching and tipping, in the darkness increasing his unsteadiness tenfold. But in the dark, he saw it was true. Killing McCarty made no difference – if Calvert was doomed, he died with it. _Unless_ –

And there is was. Calvert was doomed _because_ of the Stillwater Gang – McCarty’s friends, and even if they burned the town to the ground, he doubted the vile man would burn with it. They would save their own and move on to hurt another place. McCarty might even make good on his promise to kill his son, if Billy survived the carnage. So the real question was: if McCarty was the only person to survive this, and went on to kill more people: were those future deaths on his head? Could he save them now, by pulling his index finger just an _inch_ tighter?

“Rip.”

Just his name on Jonah’s lips felt like a holy experience, the sound reverberating in the darkness deep into his bones, and the tide of bitterness and anger raging within him were silenced. There was a hint of desperation to the word, a touch of concern, and Rip wanted to weep. He wanted to tell Jonah everything, about the destruction coming, about their chance to survive it – but he couldn’t. He was, and would always be in some aspect, a _Time Master_ ; shouldering the burden of time was his job. Between heartbeats, Rip shivered at the sound of his name, wishing that there was a way to hear Jonah say it in that way forever. To stay, and still be a hero.

_Calvert is doomed. Calvert is doomed. Calvert is doomed._

He dropped the gun.

It landed with a dull sound, hollow. The absence of its weight from his hands shocked him into opening his eyes; until the moment its cold bite left them, he had intended to pull the trigger. The second his eyes opened, Jonah was there, not even looking at the gun, eyes focused on him, and Rip knew he never could have followed through with his threat. Not while Jonah looked at him like that.

But when Jonah stepped towards him, Rip stepped away, head jerking towards McCarty, still weeping at their feet.

“Get him out of my sight.”

Seeing his face, Jonah nodded. He turned towards the crowd, yanking McCarty to his feet and beginning to prod him back towards to Station. Although hurried, every third look back towards the motionless Rip to check he was still there, Jonah took the time to look at the assembled crowd, now whispering among themselves, and seemed to think for a moment before he spoke, loudly and clearly.

“Shows over, folks! I know – we’re all under a lotta stress, but there’s no one else to fight for you, so I suggest you keep anything you have to say about this to your damn selves.”

He was gone. The crowd followed, slowly, dissipating in seconds, each person wanting to get a look at their crazy sheriff before they left, Rip assumed bitterly, as he slowly stumbled in the sand towards the steps to the Saloon, the nearest building. There, he sank to the stairs and sat heavily, body heavy and simultaneously weightless, and let the tears run down his face.

In what seemed like a heartbeat, Jonah was back.

He didn’t say anything for a moment, just looked at Rip, eyes soft. Nodding slightly, as if his look had revealed something Rip couldn’t see, he sat down beside him, knee’s touching. Jonah was like that: always knew exactly what to do and say.

“Hell of a day, kid,” Jonah said finally. Although his eyes were on the horizon, Rip knew Jonah could see him, somehow, and the name from his first few weeks in Calvert struck him silent. It felt like a lifetime ago, but was just less than a year. So much had happened . . . but time, he had learned, was like that. A month could feel a lifetime, a year a second, or a kiss, eternity.

“I’m sorry I’m not the person I was,” he replied after a pause, tongue thick and clumsy with the words. Tears were still leaking from the corners of his eyes, that Rip knew, but he didn’t know how to stop them. “Or the person I became. I think I’m somebody else now. And I – I don’t know if that person can save you.”

“Save me from what?” Jonah asked, turning to him now. He placed a hand on Rip’s knee and maintained eye contact, attentive but pushing. Then there were those eyes. God, Rip loved his eyes. He would do anything not to see them darken with the truth, including lie.

“The world,” he deflected, breaking the gaze to look down, his own hand having moved without thinking to cover Jonah’s. “The Stillwater Gang. Life. _Time_.”

“I never asked you to save me.”

“You’d never have to.”

“But you already have,” Jonah said strongly, hand tightening around his own. “Just by being here, you have. I don’t want to lose you, Rip. But it feels like I am.”

For the second time that afternoon, Rip closed his eyes in pain. The words reflected his own fears too closely, something he couldn’t face, yet was starting to seem an inevitability. He could stay on a sinking ship and never stop trying – or he could save Jonah. Neither way ended up with them together.

He didn’t want to answer, so moved forward until his lips met Jonah’s. The kiss tasted like the salt of his tears, still wet on his lips, and after a minute he pulled away and stood, not wanting to have to look back and see Jonah looking hurt again. Instead, Rip picked up his hat from where it had fallen on the ground, shook loose the sand, and placed it atop his head once more. Like a mask, he felt in control again . . . and was starting to get a bad idea.

Although he spoke to Jonah, Rip didn’t look at him.

“Go check on McCarty, see if he needs a fresh set of clothes,” he said, then added. “Please.”

He didn’t need to see Jonah to know what happened. The Deputy got wearily to his feet, straightened his coat, and nodded, although he wanted the opposite. “Alright. For you.”

Rip was halfway to the Waverider when he found the body, just outside of town, where they would have to look for it to find it. That made him mad all over again – the Stillwater Gang knew they had them looking now, expecting a body, considering the threat. If he could get to them right now . . . but he couldn’t, and he was one man, and the world stood stacked against him.

He left the body and carried on to his ship, hoping Gideon would provide as she always did. She had exactly what he needed, but Rip wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not.

When he got back to the body, he carried it back into town, and yet the weight of a tiny device in his pocket was heavier than the human slung over his back. He found Jonah in the station; the other man grabbed a shovel. That day, they dug the grave together.

*

On the third day, they almost breathed a sigh of relief.

Morning came, and there was nothing: no panic, no shouts, no body. They woke and dressed in silence, each man lost in his own thoughts, waiting for the crack of noise to break the illusion of peace. None came. Jonah passed Rip his hat and gun, and their fingers brushed for just a moment, causing Rip to look up and catch his eyes.

He looked _exhausted_ , like the weight of the world ten times over hung around his neck. Rip’s eyes were red-rimmed and circled by bags darker than the sky above, heralding a storm to come. Despite the tan that had settled into his skin, he looked pale, cheeks drained of blood, almost corpse-like in his pallor and the dead look behind his eyes. Frankly, Rip looked like _shit_.

“Hey,” Jonah murmured. Reaching out a hand to cup Rip’s cheek, fingers barely brushing the skin clammy with sweat before the other man jerked violently away, stepping briskly back out of his reach. Looking to his face quickly, he found Rip’s eyes now wide, filled with something akin to fear as he shook his head.

“Don’t,” Rip said, and the word was almost enough to strike Jonah down. “Just . . . _don’t_.”

He went to the Station alone, and Jonah didn’t have the heart to follow. There was a time he would have followed Rip anywhere, to the gates of hell to ask for water if need be . . . but when Rip looked at him that way, he felt ten inches tall, and he could barely manage the walk to the Saloon, let alone hell.

Sally served him water, which he was thankful for, not wanting his head clouded with alcohol or to fall into its embrace in the absence of love. That road lead nowhere good. Despite that, Jonah wished he could stop thinking. Just for a minute. Just for a _second_.

Yesterday had scared him. It wasn’t something he’d admit out loud, even thinking it felt like a dirty confession, as if he were betraying Rip. Doubt was like that, he supposed. It was never found in convenient places, but wormed itself into places that just yesterday were golden and perfect in your memory. And now, there it was in the shape of Rip, who he had been sure would pull the trigger, who was . . . changed, somehow. He was no longer the kid who had gotten beaten up in a bar on his first night in town, nor the optimistic Sheriff whom Jonah loved so dearly.

It was as if a part of Rip had died with the first body the Stillwater Gang dropped in town, the part that held all of his hope and innocence and life that had in turn, gave light to Jonah’s darker places. Rip always had enough for both of them – or he had, before now. Jonah wasn’t sure he could hold them together alone. But leaving was unthinkable.

It was a stalemate he saw no way around. He couldn’t make the Stillwater Gang disappear, and his attempts to reach Rip so far hadn’t lasted longer than the time it took for them to find the next body, before Rip sank again into this strange paranoia and despair.

All he could do was . . . well, that was the problem. He didn’t have an answer to that anymore. And waiting around like this was better suited to less volatile men than him.

“Deputy. Deputy?”

The voice was nothing, until he heard his name.

“Jonah?”

Finally, he looked up, the use of his name catching his attention. The people of Calvert had been more than welcoming as he stepped into the role of Deputy, but even now, the familiarity they treated him with warmed something in his chest, as if he belonged there instead of just passing through, as he usually did. It was one of those little things that weren’t really little at all. Jonah always noticed.

“Yeah?” he replied, looking up to find Sally in front of him, a young girl at her heels. The child clung to the barmaid’s skirts, eyes wide with fright and curiosity, half hidden yet peering out at him. Although Jonah squinted in confusion at the sight, Sally knew him better than most, and was never deterred by his changes in attitudes.

“This is Annabelle. She . . . she found another one. I’m sorry.” Sally spoke, wincing at the words. The scrunch of her nose sang of sympathy, but she pushed it aside, turning to the small girl. “Tell him, Belle. He won’t bite – I promise.”

“We were playing at the Jenkin’s barn,” Annabelle began shyly, eyes flicking around guiltily. Jonah tried not to react to the name of the barn, which stood away from the town, but had once been the spot for a hideout/makeout for him and Rip. It was a good memory. “They . . . Mr. Jenkins usually comes out and starts yellin’ at us for playing there. But he didn’t today. So I . . . I went into his house, and all the people in there wouldn’t wake up. I don’t think they’re gonna.”

Jonah sighed internally, eyes closing for the briefest of moments before he swiped a hand over them, moving to kneel quickly beside the girl. She didn’t flinch away from him. On her level, Jonah tried to arrange his face into one of comfort, more acutely aware than ever of the stiffness of the scarred side.

“Thank you for comin’ to tell me this, it was very brave of you,” he said, maintaining eye contact. “I know you must have been scared. But you did a good thing, Annabelle. We’ll make sure those folks get the respect they deserve now.”

“I’m sorry for going there, I know I shouldn’t have-”

“No, no,” Jonah shook his head. Tentatively, he reached forward a hand to brush dark hair out of the girl’s eyes, seeing guilt shining in their reflection. He wasn’t good at emotion, but that was no excuse not to comfort a scared little girl, not ever. “You have nothin’ to apologise for, you hear me? You helped them. Now, I bet Sally here has something sweet for you as a reward somewhere,” he spoke, looking to the barmaid, who nodded back, smiling. “So you get that, then go on home. Stay safe for me, and if you anything else, you come find me right away. Promise?”

“Promise,” she chirped back, beaming. Annabelle followed off after Sally again, but not before throwing her arms around Jonah’s neck quickly. “Thank you, Deputy Jonah.”

To be someone worthwhile in the eyes of a child, someone who has no ulterior motive to their kindness, meant more to him than it should have.

When he straightened, standing and looking to the door, he froze when he saw Rip framed in it. The other man looked as stuck to the spot as he did: eyes on Jonah and expression broken. His lips were smiling at the sight, but it looked a sad one to Jonah, who had become an expert on reading the tilt of Rip’s lips. Then there were those tired eyes, clouded over now and someplace he could never reach.

The second Jonah began to piece apart the look, Rip blinked and was suddenly back in the room, jumping over Jonah’s face, then his head jerking towards the door.

“It seems we have more work to do,” he said quietly, beginning to walk away.

For now, Jonah followed. He wasn’t sure how many more graves he could dig without something snapping, without something precious being lost, without walking out with a gun in his hand and taking out the Stillwater Gang or dying trying.

But for now, Rip needed him. And Jonah loved him.

As long as that remained true, he could wait.

*

On the fourth day, Rip spent five hours in the Sheriff’s station, turning the small metal device he had collected from the Waverider over and over in his hands, hoping an idea would come to him that would mean he never had to use it. It was silent apart from the occasional voices from the cells and people passing by outside. That left him with nothing to do but listen to his own thoughts, as different parts of his mind warred with one another to be heard and put forward their case on how to move forward.

_Calvert is doomed._

He had options, none of them good. The metal disc was one of them, so heavy in his palms. It froze where it touched, the metal chilled despite the heat of the day, unnaturally so, as if it knew the dark potential it had. As he fondled it, twisting it over and over in a trance, Rip felt its smooth sides and sharp edges, running his fingertips over it. _Such a small thing_ , he thought _, with the potential to wipe out so much . . ._

Yesterday had shook him, perhaps even more than confronting McCarty had the day before that. Seeing Jonah with that little girl . . . he had been smiling, knelt down and ever so gentle; and the child had embraced him back. And when she did -

Jonah was a sentimental man hiding in the shell of someone who had no reason to love so deeply. By all rights, he should be the angry, bitter person Rip had initially thought he was, for what he had been through and how the world treated him. But he saved Rip when he had no idea who he even was. But he saved Moore. But he closed his eyes when that little girl hugged him, eyes closed and soft and radiating such a joy at the affection that it had brought tears to Rip’s eyes as he watched. But, but, but -

But Jonah Hex was nothing but a contradiction, who didn’t give a damn what he should be, and just unapologetically _was_.

And the cracks in Rip’s original plan to make Jonah hate him were forged, cracked wider, and tore the whole damn thing down in that moment. Because it was bigger than the two of them now. Loving each other may have changed them, may have brought out sides of them the two had forgotten existed, but it was a love story that always rested on three things: Jonah, Rip, and Calvert.

That little town with a big heart that had, somehow, become their home. And there his best laid plan failed, because even if he did manage to convince Jonah that he did not love him, even if he did break his heart and try to drive him away – Jonah loved more than him now. And he would fight for Calvert, and its people, to the death if need be; and Rip still couldn’t bear to see that happen.

Which led him back to the device in his hand, and a plan that left him feeling ill.

_Calvert is doomed. But he doesn’t have to be_.

Rip wished he could erase Druce’s words. If not for the warning, yes, he would have died, and so would Jonah. But that would have been their choice. It would have been their life. But knowing was a weight that lingered, and gave him the insight that changed everything; that he might be able to save Jonah’s life. It was a burden. And yet – saving Jonah was all he could ever want from this world, to know he was out there, living, going on.

Knowing meant he couldn’t stand by and let Jonah die.

“Damn you, Druce,” Rip breathed quietly, leaning back in his chair. Head hanging back, he looked at the dust floating around his head in the sunlight. That was what his world would become, if he lost Jonah. _Dust_.

And Rip already knew that he would do anything to stop that happening, and he was just buying time by putting it off – but he couldn’t stop himself. If this week was all he had left, he intended to make the most of every second. Like a drowning man and driftwood, he clung to it.

When Jonah came in with a face of thunder, Rip stood, crossing the room in four short strides. Instead of his usual coldness, seeing the distress of this man he loved more than life itself, he had no words, and instead stepped closer to Jonah, putting his arms around him and pressing his chin into Jonah’s shoulder. It was all he could think to do.

After a moment, Jonah’s hands came to rest on his back, warm where they landed, and hugged him back. They embraced in the quiet for a long minute, before Rip stepped away.

“I love you,” he said, and meant it.

There were no words for the flooding of emotion on Jonah’s face at finally hearing the words. He didn’t need to say it back; Rip already knew. For what felt like an eternity, they just looked at one another, and later Rip would say that if he ever had to pick a moment to dwell in forever, that would have been it.

*

On the fifth day, Jonah walked through the town at dawn. As light flooded the streets, erasing the darkness in a blinding moment instead of the usual gentle arrival, he wondered if heaven was a real place, and how it could be anywhere but here, bathed in golden sunlight. Nothing could be as beautiful on this earth than Calvert at dawn.

The hand in his own was warm, and he paused to look over at Rip.

“If it comes down to it,” Jonah remarked softly, feeling as if speaking could break the perfection of the moment, as if words would shatter the illusion, “I want this to be it. The last thing I see.”

A look flickered over Rip’s face, and he would almost have called it guilt. Then it stilled, and Rip looked over at him in turn, although now the calmness on his face looked forced, and Jonah felt something shift in his gut. Something still wasn’t right with Rip.

“Why?”

There it was again, the guilt, pushing on the corners of Rip’s eyes. The answer meant something, so Jonah thought before he answers, eyes turning back towards the horizon, at the sun peeking out from behind the desert.

“Because,” he replied after a moment, “the world could start and end at Calvert, and that would be enough for me.”

The words seemed to hang heavily for them between them for a moment. When he looked over at Rip, the other man had closed his eyes to the sunrise, and there were tears on his cheeks. Once his eyes opened again, Rip looked around them at the town as if it haunted him, pain tracing each street, each building. He wondered what the other man saw that could be so terrible.

But of course, Rip wasn’t just anybody. He was in no way ordinary, for so many reasons, yet at the same time it was all too easy to forget he was from the future. Jonah flinched. To Rip, this town had been gone for hundreds of years. No wonder he looked so haunted. Jonah squeezed his hand tightly.

“The future is a burden,” Jonah said, turning away from the view to look at the one that really mattered to him. “I wish you’d let me share it with you.”

Rip looked up sharply. “I wish we had _time_ . . . if I could choose, if I had all the time in the universe, all those lifetimes . . . they’d be yours, Jonah. I’d give them all to you.”

If kisses were lifetimes, Rip’s wish would have come true that day. They spent it everywhere, walking around the town, but Jonah was the happiest just sitting in their room with Rip tangled around him, or his eyes an inch away from his own, close enough to see the flecks of colour within them. They both knew they were running out of time. So they made up for it in closeness, and kisses, and words.

When the body for that day was found, they asked for someone else to bury it, as they had been doing all week. That day was theirs. The Stillwater Gang could not touch it.

*

On the sixth day, Rip thought he might die.

It was after they had found the promised victim of the day, this time with a bloody note thrown on top of the body and left outside the Sheriff’s station at dawn. Arriving with Jonah, Rip felt his legs buckle at the sight, knees hitting the sand a second later as he fell, leaving his body completely in shock. Somewhere, vaguely, he head Jonah swear and shout and the sound of heavy footsteps walking away, unable to look anymore.

Their first friend, their constant supporter, the woman who Rip had met first when he came to Calvert lay dead in the dirt. _Sally_ . . .

The barmaid always had a friendly word for them, and a smile, and brought light to that dingy Saloon in a way no one else could. In everything, she was constant. She was the first one on the field to plant seeds, and the last person to die in the Stillwater Gang’s reign of terror.

Choking, Rip threw up in the sand on his hands and knees, feeling like all the air had been crushed out of him. Retching, heaving, gasping, he stumbled towards her only when his mouth felt as dry as his throat, not wanting to desecrate her corpse more than it had been. There was blood on her mouth, and her eyes were open, but he knelt at her side and ghosted his fingertips across them to shut them.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Rip whispered, barely aware that he was speaking at all. “I should have saved you. I’m _so_ sorry, Sally. You deserved better than this.”

With trembling hands, he picked up the note. It held none of the eloquence of their last note, or the length. This time, the Stillwater Gangs message was short and blunt.

**We Attack Tomorrow At Noon.**

Finding Sally’s body, Rip wished he was dead in her place. But feeling as if he were dying came later: sitting on a creaky stool at the Saloon, the entire town crammed into the room for the first time, assembled in their grief, faces sombre in the candlelight. The thigh brushing his own was Jonah’s, and it was the man’s gruff voice addressing the town, glass in his hand.

“We all knew Sally . . . all loved her. She made this place,” Jonah gestured around the bar with his cup, lifting it in toast. “The Stillwater Gang have made their threats and killed our own. If . . . if you want to, now is the time to hand me and Rip over to them and lay down your arms. They might spare some of ya, might kill others. But do that in the morning – tonight is for her. For Sally.”

“ _For Sally_ ,” the town called back, drinking to the memory of her. It was all that remained.

“Sally,” was all Rip managed to get out, word dying on his lips in a shaking breath. His eyes stung fiercely, looking around at the faces around him, quickly turning to a burning he couldn’t repress. The pressure faded as the tears spilled from his eyes, mirrored in a lot of the faces around him. Nobody would weep for them, though, because there would be nobody left to.

_Calvert is doomed_.

The town gathered in dim light, united for what might be the last time, and then the piano started the chime again. Someone played a song everybody there seemed to know, Rip being the only one ignorant to it. It was sad and slow, yet someone started singing along, and soon more people joined the tune.

_Calvert is doomed_.

It caught like wildfire around the bar, this odd chorus of voices: never quite in tune, and yet not striking him as sounding wrong, either. It fitted perfectly. Even Jonah knew the words, inexplicably, and was murmuring along.

_Calvert is doomed_.

With the song came smiles, slow to start at first, as the people of Calvert looked at their family and friends and neighbours all coming together, holding the ones they loved close, exchanging looks with people who were complete strangers and for that moment, being connected. It felt like warmth. Even without knowing the words, the sad song suddenly felt like something different to Rip as he wept to watch them, something that could be comfort – or even hope.

_Calvert is doomed_.

But not for him. He didn’t know the words, but he knew the future.

_Calvert is doomed_.

Tomorrow.

 

*

The last day dawned in dread.

It came in slowly as the sun rose around them, the feeling of despair that sat like a stone in his stomach. Rip tried to ignore it, falling more into Jonah, wanting just to pretend the dream could last a while longer. But, sure as the town came to lift outside, sounds of the town waking mingling with their breathing, it grew until he eventually broke apart, sitting upright on their bed.

“Rip?”

“I – I just, give me a second.”

Rip sighed, a heavy sound. It was all his strength not to let the choked laughter of bitter irony cross his lips, knowing that although Jonah thought the town could still be saved because he could hear it, Rip knew it could not. If hope existed only as long as the town stood – then there was a day until hope died forever. That made him Pandora’s shadow. She let all the bad out before releasing the final ember of hope – he tried to put the all the darkness back into a box by saving Calvert but ended up snuffing that flame out.

“Hey now,” Jonah said, sitting up beside him. He turned Rip’s face towards his own and kissed him, steadying him for a moment. “Through everything, I knew I might die any day. But standing by your side? Here, in our home that we built together? I can think of no better way to go, Rip.”

“No,” Rip shook his head. “I can’t lose you.”

“You won’t lose me.”

It was impossible. Rip couldn’t just stop fighting for the town, but with those dark eyes an inch away from his own, shining with sunlight and telling him hope was something tangible in the home they had built together? The memory was still fresh in his mind, of that morning a month ago before they planted seeds, the last time he was truly happy. Jonah looked the same, still looking at him with love Rip knew he didn’t deserve. With forgiveness in his closeness after Rip’s forced arguments, with love in his gaze, and hope on his tongue. He would always be that way to Rip, who desperately tried to commit that moment to his memory, every inch and curve of Jonah’s face, of the nights in that bed, and the mornings woken by the sun.

And yet, the fact still remained: Rip would let the whole world burn to keep Jonah safe.

It made him feel sick to his stomach, the thought of what he would do to protect the man in front of him. He turned away, if only to breathe again, sitting at the edge of their bed; misinterpreting the situation, Jonah followed. His hand covered Rip’s.

“Hey, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“You say that all the time, but look at you, Rip. There’s something.” Jonah placed a hand to Rip’s forehead to check for a fever, and while warm, that was just an effect of the desert heat. Gone from passionate to cold, clammy in a few seconds, he saw Rip turn pale. Forcefully, he put a hand under Rip’s chin and turned it up in his direction. “Please, talk to me. We’re better facin’ it together, you know it, just let me . . . let me help you.”

Rip turned to Jonah, and he was still so perfect, sitting there. If only he could freeze time and never leave. But he blinked, and saw blood trickle from the corner of Jonah’s mouth, saw the town ablaze; saw their friends dead, their home turned to dust. And in the middle of it all, in the chaos and at the front of his worry, he saw Jonah. Bleeding, screaming out in pain, eyes wide with fright instead of wonder.

In a heartbeart, he saw Jonah dead.

And the thought was enough to make Rip stand. “I can’t.”

“I know you, Rip. And . . . s’not been the same recently, and that’s down to the both us – it is,” Jonah cut off Rip’s protest with a wave of a hand as they faced one another again. He rose to stand, for the first time his patience cracking, letting frustration bleed through. That was good; it was something Rip could use for what had to be done. “We both made choices, not just you. You don’t have to carry whatever this is alone.”

Words echoed back at him, spoken in the dark and bearing a blacker future than the night they had been spoken in. _Calvert is doomed. But you don’t have to be, and neither does he._

**_And neither does he._ **

Rip Hunter, with his mind too quick for his own good, took stock of the facts as quick he could. He laid them out plainly, evenly, truly, and knew all of it was true in the heartbeats he took to assemble them:

One, Time Master Druce had come with a warning that the town was doomed.

Two, he had no reason to lie – he was a Time Master, he had always looked out for Rip. He respected Druce. He trusted him.

Three, if Rip trusted him now, there was no escaping this.

Four, Jonah wouldn’t leave Calvert to burn.

Five, if they stayed, they would be together, but they would also _die_ together.

Six, he couldn’t watch Jonah die.

Seven, he loved Jonah.

Eight, until the day he died, he would always love Jonah.

Nine, to leave him would break Rip’s heart in a way that never went away.

Ten, but to see him dead would break his soul, would put out the sun, would reduce the world to a speck of dust like the sand of Calvert constantly floating all around them, because Jonah _was_ the world.

Eleven, he never wanted to see a world without Jonah in it. Such a place held nothing for Rip.

Twelve – hardest of all - the only way to make Jonah leave this town – leave _him_ – was to turn that love to hate, or indifference, or apathy. Everything the opposite of love. All it would take was his heart, and his home, and his freedom.

_Calvert is doomed –_

“I love you,” Rip blurted, and he knew he sounded panicked and desperate, but he wanted to say it at least once more. He needed to say it again. He guessed he needed to hear it back again, too.

“You know I love you, too,” Jonah replied, because he could read a situation in a second and knew what Rip needed before Rip himself did, nine times out of ten. The cowboy he had fell for stepped forward again, and placed a hand on the side of Rip’s face, a breath away now. “It was like waking up, meeting you. I loved you then, and I love you now. And if we die today, that would be enough.”

“As long as I live,” Rip began, and kissed him for the last time, hands going to Jonah’s collar and pulling them together. A thumb rubbed his cheek, caught in the stubble there, and Rip never wanted to let go, if it meant his last breath went to kissing Jonah. But he stepped back, gasping and pressing their foreheads together; he looked in Jonah’s eyes, making the other man understand, desperate for him to know. “You will be in my heart. I will carry you and the memory of this with me, always.”

“Rip . . .”

Jonah had only a second to look confused and say his name when Rip moved, quick and soft as thunder. He pulled the metal device he had collected from the Waverider into Jonah’s palm and pressed the symbol in the centre to activate it. The effect was instantaneous – even with his eyes locked on Rip’s, Jonah fell, unconscious in a moment.

With a heaved sob, Rip caught him, laying him down on the floorboards of their room. On his knees beside the man, Rip allowed himself a moment to break down, letting the tears run freely down his feet and stain his knees where he sat, choking and weeping, hands on Jonah’s face for just a second longer.

When he stopped sobbing, he coughed a few times, before wiping his eyes with his sleeves and trying to speak, voice hoarse to whisper. “I’m sorry, Jonah. I’m sorry. I hope someday you will forgive me.”

Rip stood. Walking over to the mirror, he grabbed the washcloth and rubbed it over his face until it was red, taking his tears with it. He stared at himself, wondering how he got this far. So much had changed since the first time he looked in that mirror, with a face full of fresh bruises and Jonah’s name on his mind.

He was not the same man he had been before he arrived at Calvert; not the same Time Master.

Slowly, with impending doom, he turned back to Jonah and sat a few feet away. Then, he began talking to the unconscious man in a toneless, dead voice. He could afford to feel while he did this; it might have effects later if emotions bled through in this stage.

“You-” he broke off already, coughing again to clear his throat. Already there was sadness in his voice, so he tried again. “You came to Calvert a year ago to find Cillian Moore for an unknown party. You saved me from a bar fight. I found you, afterwards. After – after a while, we began to work together towards a common goal. You shared information and I shared resources . . . that is all,” his voice broke again. Rip cursed silently, slamming a closed fist into the floor in frustration. He couldn’t afford to feel. “We found Moore, and let him go. Then you stayed in the town in my aid, _because_ I payed you to do so. No other reason. Begrudgingly you became my Deputy. We worked together. That is all. I told you that I was from the future. You know this to be true. All this ever meant was that you were curious to see my ship, but never did. We were forced colleges for a time. Now, if you wish to live, you must leave. The Stillwater Gang are coming. This town was just another job to you – it meant _nothing_.”

Rip almost reached out to touch Jonah, but yanked his hand back a fraction of an inch away from the other man’s face. No contact. No memories.

“This is all you will remember of our time here when you awake,” he forced himself to say, mechanically. Inside his chest, he felt his heart stammer, then peter out. It had no reason to flutter or beat fast without Jonah. “This was just another job, another town, another place to pass through. That . . . that is all.”

Eyes dead, he reached over and pressed the device attached to Jonah’s hand again. It detached, and he pocketed it in a split-second as the other man awoke with a start, sitting bolt upright. After blinking, he turned to Rip, eyes narrowing into slits.

“What the hell are you lookin’ at, Hunter?” he demanded, jumping to his feet brusquely. “Sittin’ there gawping like an idiot. We gotta get goin’ before the Stillwater Gang arrive! I ain’t dying in this watering hole.”

“You collapsed,” Rip lied smoothly, following him to his feet. He stood in the room, but there was no fond memory in Jonah’s eyes as they flicked about, only a cold, disinterested indifference. “I will walk you out . . . but I will not be leaving with you. My place is here.”

“Then your _grave_ is here,” Jonah replied. "You're from the future, Hunter. Don't you already know how this ends?"

"No. I don't, Jonah," Rip lied, hoping the future he knew was coming was still avoidable. It hurt to breathe, thinking about the weight of history pressing down on him, cemented with those three words: _Calvert is doomed_. "I wish I did."

"Then you really _should_ run."

There was no concern in Jonah's tone: no worry, no attachment, no love. He turned to go without so much as a second glance. Every step Rip took in following took him further away from reality, tore his heart to pieces, and hollowed out his insides. But he followed anyway. Just for one last look.

When got outside, he spat once into the sand, looking back up at Rip.

“You don’t have to die here, you know,” he said, and there was something in his eyes – the edges of memories trying to break through, just a hint of what he had been – but the device did its job, and they clouded over a second later. “You should run. Get out while you still can. Get away from here.”

“I’m afraid I cannot, my friend,” Rip said. They were standing in almost the same spot they had watched the sun rise in the day before, and again he noticed a glimmer in Jonah’s eyes. Maybe one day, he would remember, maybe he wouldn’t. But he _would_ live. To Rip, that was all that mattered – wanting their last moment together to be a good one, he extended a hand. “Thank you for everything.”

Slowly, Jonah took it. As their hands touched, his eyes widened a fraction, and the grip tightened more than it should have. For a second, Rip thought he had failed; that Jonah remembered. Then he calmed again. Whether that was a blessing or not would haunt Rip for a long time.

“I may live to see you again,” Jonah replied easily. “If you survive this, and ever need me, you know where I’ll be.”

Although his heart was shattering inside him, tearing through him, shrapnel; Rip forced a smile with tears in his eyes. “I’ll just look for trouble – I’m sure you won’t be far.”

Jonah laughed then, loud and booming and _him_. The one Rip had loved, who smiled and laughed and felt things oh so deeply. If there was such a thing as mercy, perhaps remnants of that Jonah survived within him. Perhaps, he wouldn’t be the lonely man he had been. Rip hoped so, he really, truly did.

“Funny,” Jonah replied, taking his horses reigns in his hands and mounting. It looked for a minute that he would ride away without another word, but he looked back. “Be well, Rip.”

Rip nodded, hoping his voice didn’t shake too obviously as he replied. “ _Live_ well, Jonah.”

Jonah Hex rode out of Calvert in a cloud of dust, and nobody saw the Sheriff standing watching him go, tears on his face and heart at his feet.

*

Calvert assembled when its Sheriff called. Rip stood on the steps of the Saloon, and looked down at these people who had changed him so much. He knew what he had to do.

Rip took off his hat, holding it in his hands. “I’m turning myself over to the Stillwater Gang.”

“No!”

“-If I surrender to them and you lay down your arms, they may spare the town,” Rip ploughed on through the shout, which was repeated by the crowd, raising his voice to be heard over the uprising of voices. “Collect your weapons and line them on the perimeter of the town. Leave your homes and wait along this street, showing you are unarmed-”

“Like _hell_ we’re gonna lay down and surrender!” another voice yelled, belonging to a woman standing at the front of the crowd. A lot of people nodded along with her. “They _killed_ Sally! They killed so many of us, and we’re not lettin’ them take our home.”

Another voice chimed in. “Or you, Sheriff Hunter.”

“Yeah,” the crowd seemed to agree in one voice. Like at the bar, the town of Calvert unified in a chant, a voice, but this time it was the opposite of what he wanted. On their faces he saw rebellion, and anger, but he knew they would die if they fought. He had to make them see that.

“Yes!” he shouted, commanding their attention again. “They killed Sally. They killed others. They cut off this town, and they will burn it to the ground before they let it remain free. If you fight – you _will_ die.”

From the back of the crowd came a shout, “Then we die free!”

Rip shook his head, slamming his hand against the wooden beam beside him. “ _Please_ , listen to me! The Stillwater Gang are coming _now_ , and you cannot hope to stand against them. There is no outcome where you survive that. Do not throw away your lives for nothing – they will kill your families; kill your friends – live, for me. Please don’t throw this chance away.”

“That’s the thing, see, Sheriff Hunter,” a man said, stepping forwards. “This is our town. Our _home_. And we’re gonna fight for it, because that still means something’.”

“You will die. All of you.”

“Maybe,” the man replied, looking around at the people surrounding him. “Maybe not. But we will die on our feet instead of living cowering under those animals. We will die for somethin’, which is more than most get . . . if anyone wants to leave, take their family someplace safe, I wish them luck – but anyone who wants to stay and fight, I’ll be proud to call my brother and die at their side.”

Rip’s voice was ragged in his throat, “Then it would be my honour to die among you.”

At quarter to noon, the Stillwater Gang visible in the distance charging towards them, Rip stood amid the people of Calvert. There was a warm gun in his hand and a line of honest people stretching out either side of him, running east and west to what could be the end of the world. The power of a single common enemy, to give people the chance to fight for themselves; he remembered saying something about that to Jonah, a long time ago. About believing humanity would fight to save itself.

He wished this town had chosen differently. To die _for_ them, he was prepared. Dying with them was just another hole being worn into his heart, and he already had enough. For a second, he even wished Jonah was there – Rip wanted the last thing he saw on this earth to be his face. But then he remembered that Jonah would live long enough to tell the tale of Calvert, that he would breathe and fight another day, and Rip sighed in relief.

A part of him still wished Jonah was close, though. An idea struck him.

“I’ll be right back,” he said to the man standing beside him, jogging off quickly in the direction of the inn that had been his home.

It felt good to breathe in the smell of the old wood again, entering the room he knew blind without looking around for fear of finding ghosts. He knew exactly what he had come for: Jonah’s coat. It lay in amongst his things, and as he picked it up, the scent of Jonah mingled with the wood, and it finally felt like home again. Tenderly, Rip held the coat for a moment, just looking at the worn fabric, before his hands moved to find the broken button that had saved his life. It was above his heart. The Stillwater Gang had not killed him that day, as they should have, because of this coat – because of Jonah.

Slowly, Rip turned it over until he found the sleeves, sliding it over his shoulders. It was the first time since that day he had worn it. The coat fit like a glove, and the feeling that Jonah was with him filled him with the courage to walk back towards to door, ready to fight.

Rip never saw the blow that knocked him out coming, just fell into darkness with a small grunt of shock, and saw no more.

*

A week after he had left, Jonah was sitting in a bar five hours away from Calvert. He should have gone further, taken off and rode until he found a place that had never even heard the name of the Stillwater Gang. That was the safe thing to do – the smart thing; and yet there he was, lingering, although the reason why escaped him. All he knew was that try as he might for the past week, something about that town was following him around.

Sometimes, he dreamed of Calvert. He saw streets that felt familiar, places he didn’t remember ever being in upon waking, smells and sounds and the feeling of hay between his palms. He saw the town by gaslight and sunlight. It felt real. In his head, he seemed to know the place well, and there was this _warmth_ about it –

In those dreams, he saw Sheriff Hunter too.

Jonah couldn’t seem to leave, and it pissed him off that he didn’t know why, frankly. Swallowing the last dregs of stale beer from his mug, he left the tavern he was drinking in, grabbed his horse, and rode out into the black of night, heading back towards that strange town. He needed to know why it was calling to him. Why it meant something.

It was first light by the time he arrived, the journey lengthened by the slower pace he had to do, riding not safe in the dark. But he got there quicker than made sense, the ride going in the blink of an eye, solely focused on the getting there – and not what he might find when he did.

“What the . . .”

Calvert was no more.

He rode into a town of ash, jumping off his horse to walk through the ruins. Jonah turned in a circle on what was once the main street, but was not a hollowed out hole that once would have been a town, buildings around him all charred and gutted, blackened with flame and collapsed. Everywhere he looked, he found buildings in the same state. He paused in front of the inn he recalled staying at, although something in his chest stirred at the sight, heart leaping as if in pain at the sight . . . he wished he knew why it did that. To him, it meant nothing – it was just a place he had stayed.

_That is all_.

And there, in his minds, he heard the words in Rip’s tongue, clear as a bell.

Jerking back, he walked until he had passed through the entire town. So far, he was surprised by the lack of causalities – he had seen a few bodies here and there, but they were isolated, nowhere near the full population of the town. That made him happy, almost hopeful as he picked up pace, believing the town might have escaped, that Hunter had more sense than he seemed to and got them all to run.

Hope lasted about five minutes.

As he turned a corner near a field at the edge of town – and again, he almost smiled at something he couldn’t quite remember, but there was something about the sight that filled him with joy – he froze when he saw the bodies. This, from the looks of the torn up ground and the pure volume of bodies laid out, was the battlefield. It took him a minute to force his feet to walk towards them.

They took him past faces that although familiar, he couldn’t name. There were men and women, old and young, some with weapons still in their hands. These people had died fighting.

Nowhere among the dead did he find Rip Hunter.

He didn’t know why that revelation forced him to his knees, aware of warmth on his cheeks and the blur of his vision, a fistful of ash running through his hands. Jonah wept, feeling for the loss of the town, but not knowing why. Yet his chest ached, so fiercely he thought he might pass out, and he couldn’t deny the connection he felt with this place. It angered him as well as hurt him. He wanted answers.

It was an hour before he rose again, tears all dried up. Yet a sense of obligation remained. It took Jonah another hour to find a shovel in the rubble of the town, picking a place by feeling at the edge of town and beginning to dig. The sun soared through the sky, hours passed, and the grave was dug, dirt by pile of dirt.

Jonah buried everyone he could find, they deserved that much. He marked their grave by noticing a growth at his feet when he was finished. Crouching, he saw that the burst of green in the sand was a tree sapling, just taking root.

Another surge passed through him, but nothing change. He still could not remember why the sight would fill him with hope again.

The sight of the growing tree was the one he took from that day, as Jonah turned and walked back the way he had came, head full of questions he might never get an answer to, and a heart heavy for someone he didn’t know he missed.

*

Waking with a shudder, Rip knew within seconds that he was on the Waverider. Calvert had become like a home to him, but he would never forget that ship. Why he was on it puzzled his fogged mind for a second, then memories hit him like a train – he was about to fight the Stillwater Gang.

“The town,” he said aloud, jumping to his feet. He was on the flight deck, in the middle of the seats for passengers, encircled by them, but noticed someone else was flying the ship when he stood. Rip straightened, “Time Master Druce?”

The pilot seat turned, and the older Time Master looked at him levelly. “Captain Hunter. I am glad you have recovered so quickly.”

“What did you do?”

The coldness in his voice surprised even Rip, but as they left his mouth, they felt justified. He knew he had been about to fight and die, but had been knocked out – now here he was, alive and well. It wasn’t hard to put the pieces of what had happened together. And it was not Druce’s choice to make.

“I saved your life, Captain,” Druce replied evenly. He never took his eyes away from Rip. “I removed you from the town before it was removed from the map. There is a bigger future planned for you. It was not your destiny to die there.”

“Not my . . . not my destiny?!” Rip felt his anger spike then burst as he roared, taking a few steps closer. He couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe – he had to go back, had to try and save the town. “I was going to die for them! I wanted to . . . I _wanted_ to die for them. With them. I don’t give a damn if you think that was my destiny, it was my _choice_!”

“Like it was Jonah Hex’s?”

Time Master Druce’s voice turned condescending, judgemental. He tilted an eyebrow, and Rip blanched.

“I had to save Jonah-”

“No, you chose to,” he replied. “You took his choice to fight away from him to save his life – he is fine, by the way – and I did the same for you. That is all.”

The choice of words caused the last of the colour to drain from Rip’s face. All of the energy evaporated alongside it, and he slumped into the nearest chair for fear that if he did not sit down, he would collapse. Unseeing, his eyes fell away from the challenge, clouded quickly. Everything he had worked towards, all he had expected – it was gone, torn away in a heartbeat.

Calvert couldn’t just be _gone_.

He was crying before he knew it, although a certain relief that Jonah still lived mingled with the sorrow wracking his ribs, feeling as if the carpet had been ripped from underneath his feet. He was falling, falling into grief and back into the Time Masters, and Rip had no idea how to stop. So he allowed himself to cry for the future that could have been in that town, with Jonah, in another lifetime.

“You could have let me try to save it,” he said eventually, the words limp. “Maybe-”

“Maybe nothing,” Druce cut him off sharply. “You’re a Time Master. I have saved your life for you to serve a greater good – remember that. You used to believe in it. But . . . I have also spared a life that should have been taken. Jonah Hex lives. Do not forget that, either.” Suddenly, there was a hand on Rip’s shoulder. It rested, squeezed, then left efficiently as it had arrived. “I just want what is best for you, Rip.”

The use of his first name pulled Rip from his stupor. In the Time Masters, there was no use for emotion or informality – he looked up at Druce, and there was something akin to sympathy on the older man’s face. Rip knew this was highly out of protocol, so appreciated it all the more.

“I know,” he replied, nodding. “Thank you, Time Master Druce.”

“We will be back at the Vanishing Point shortly,” Druce replied, tone to the point and curt again. He walked back to the pilot’s seat and turned away. “You should rest until then. We expect you to be ready to return to work as soon as a mission becomes available, Captain. Do not fail us again.”

“Yes, sir,” Rip replied dully. He was a Time Master again – maybe that wasn’t too bad. He could still save some part of the world, somewhere in time. Calvert would remain a scar within in, but from now on he must keep it hidden, his own pain. It would not do to act otherwise.

He stood, and began to walk towards his room when Druce’s voice stopped him.

“And Rip? I collected your things from the room where I found you, it would do no good to leave a trace of yourself behind. See to them.”

Rip’s heart stuttered. “Yes, sir.”

Somehow, stumbling through the ship on feet that faltered for standing on metal and not shifting sand for the first time in a year, Rip made it to his quarters. He locked the door behind him. Half-falling, half-collapsing into his bed, he kicked off his boots but crawled in fully dressed, too tired to even change, feeling the weight of everything bearing down on him – from being there after so long, to that fact he was going back to the Vanishing Point at all, to what he had lost . . .

Lying on his stomach, Rip curled the blanket around him, knowing the gesture was childlike but not much caring. The cushion served as a good substitute to spooning, crushing it in his arms as thoughts rushed at him. Calvert was gone. It had finally happened, this terrible thing he had spent weeks building up in his mind, a growing storm of dark thoughts which spilled out into the world and destroyed what it touched. After so long spent sick in worry about it, the fact Calvert had really been destroyed didn’t quite feel real to him.

Tears sprung to his eyes again. Some grief could be suppressed – loosing possessions, loosing love, losing control – but not this. Not losing everything: a home, its people, the future that might have been there. For such a loss, there was a grief that made itself known with a vengeance, crushing the air out of the curled up Rip in gasps through tears, quickly falling into distress lying there, sobbing and clenching the pillow and wanting to stop existing for a while.

He had failed Calvert. It was ash, because of him. People were dead. It was a shadow he would be standing under for a long time, that he could feel in his soul.

Some nights, all that was left to do was to break down in the face of overwhelming emotion and even bigger loss. So he did, and allowed himself to sink into the folds of his bed for hours until, finally, with tear tracked cheeks, Rip fell into a fitful sleep.

*

It took him a week to build up the courage to face those memories – those ghosts.

In a box in his office, he found the few items that he had owned during his time in Calvert – clothes, papers, his Sheriff’s badge. Remnants of a life that was gone now. Most of it would be incinerated, as was protocol. Something at the bottom of the box caught his eye, and sneaking a glance to check he was still alone, Rip pulled out a faded, stained, wanted poster.

_Jonah_ –

It hurt to see his love, but he didn’t want to forget Jonah, or Calvert. Quickly, Rip slid the poster underneath a pile of books in his office. Later, he would find a place for it. Somewhere he could see it, but nobody else would notice it and think it odd. Someplace where he could remember.

Everything else, he incinerated in the clothing room. He paused, looking at himself reflected in a holo-mirror there, still folded in Jonah’s coat. Rip knew he should burn that too, that wearing it too often would cause a stir among his masters – but he also found himself not caring.

He might be a Time Master again, but he was not the rookie who had walked into Calvert. Rip was going to do things _his_ way from now on, he decided, almost smiling at the image of the coat wrapped around him. The next Calvert, he would save.

Rules were made to be broken, and time to be defied and he would never let it stand between him and somebody that he loved ever again. Rip carried a piece of Jonah around with him for a long time, in the memories women into the fabric of that coat. He loved it best, even as it became worn out, stitched up where it tore, shabby in places and a little bit odd.

He fixed it every time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will be an epilogue to this story, which all being well will be up within the week and will be in-canon of the episode and slightly afterwards to resolve Rip and Jonah's story! I hope you all enjoyed this last chapter, I really do. Writing that last part even I was upset with where it had to go, but there were a few canon issues I tried to explain with this chapter - a) Rip's trust in Time Master Druce and the Time Council in the series, despite them being shady af - he trusts them now because they allowed him to save Jonah here. Druce, knowing the future even then because of the Occulus, did this so Rip would trust him, and to measure his reaction to loss to know what Rip would do in the face of losing Miranda and Jonas. b) Jonah's both reaction and lack of reaction in 1x11. He acted like a jilted lover, but didn't react strongly enough to fit in with this fic so far - so memory loss means that seeing Rip again, he FELT something he couldn't quite explain, but didn't remember it all - not yet. c) Rip's coat, Jonah's wanted poster, Rip's need for heroism and to not corrupt the timeline; he does not want another Calvert. He changed time, and the town paid. He both wants to preserve it, but still has this ideal to save people, like give this poor guy a break, he's trying his best. So hopefully everything made sense, hopefully you liked it, please drop a comment if you did! See you for the epilogue!


	4. the end of all our exploring will to be arrive where we started

**Epilogue**

 

Ten years later, Jonah Hex walked onto the Waverider, and Rip could hardly believe his eyes.

From his office, he saw his team enter, the corners of his eyes registering the fact they had yet again picked up a stray. Internally groaning, he pushed himself to his feet, and it was as he leaned against the doorframe to chastise them that the figure spoke, a familiar hat rim and coat stepped into view – and Rip’s heart stuttered to a stop. For a moment, he just looked.

Jonah appeared well, and Rip drank this all in blissfully before he remembered he was in a room full of people who knew nothing about what had happened between them – including the object of his eager gaze.

Jonah’s eyes found his own, and although there was a flicker of recognition there, a sparking of fire behind brown eyes, even a widening of them in surprise, there was not a complete memory. Jonah remembered Rip Hunter, sheriff and partner. He did not remember that they had once loved each other. Rip saw all this in a glance, the casual interest, the way Jonah’s eyes glanced up them flicked away, already steady and focused on the task at hand.

One part of Rip was relieved. If Jonah didn’t remember, there was no shouting, no tears, no flood of questions and feelings of a man who had lost love and remembered it again. It meant there was nothing to explain, to Jonah or to his team. But it also left his stomach jolting with a familiar feeling of emptiness, of _absence_ , and Rip found himself feeling disappointed that Jonah had not remembered him, that their memories were not strong enough to break through the memory wipe over time. He found himself distinctly thrown by the fact Jonah’s eyes had not filled with recognition and emotion when he looked at him for the first time in a decade.

It had settled on him like an old scar, the memory of Jonah. It had faded into his skin, white and worn in, more like a part of himself that had always been there instead of something gained through life and choices, to the point that most days, he did not think about it anymore. But it was always there. Some days he wore it with pride, and smiled at the memories. Other days, it starkly stood out in his mind, painting grief and singing of regret, of wanting to fix things.

Jonah had no such scar of love, and Rip tried to breathe as he looked at him, spoke to him, willing his lungs to keep working despite the charging pace of his heart, which beat as if to burst free of his chest.

Ten years after it was turned to dust, Rip admitted out loud for the first time since his breakdown on the Waverider that he had known about Calvert’s fate – that it was his fault.

The kiss of knuckles against his cheek felt like something he had earned. It was the first time Jonah had touched him in over a decade, and Rip simultaneously shivered and shuddered with guilt at the sensation. He knew a punch in the face was the least he deserved; even as the years passed, and life went on, and he knew such fierce joy and loss enough to plunge the world into ice, the lingering memory of sand and gunshots never quite faded from his mind. He had _failed_ that town.

Woven into everything he did, there was a little bit of Calvert. He had swore there would never be another. No matter what happened, Rip Hunter completed his mission, and towns like that all over the timeline were safe because of it - even if his mission was a not the same one as the mission assigned by the Time Masters. Rip saved lives: that was all. The Time Masters didn’t like it, his refusal to listen, but they never really questioned him about it. As long as the timeline remained intact, they didn’t care if he saved a town, saved a life, saved a _solar system_ while he was completing his mission.

And so he did.

The real reason he hadn’t stepped outside the Waverider on this drop was that he _couldn’t_. At the thought, his mind went blank and his feet froze in place, the only movement the steady increase of his heartbeat. It was too much like Calvert, this little town of Salvation. He needed to leave. This was not a place where he could think in a clear-headed way, and that made it dangerous to him, because – he wanted to save this town, too.

But he was terrified that he wouldn’t stop there, should he walk back into this life where they was no rules but live or die, no expectations, no Savage. And Rip could not let that man go – he wouldn’t let Savage destroy another family like he had his own. He _had_ to stop Savage.

Rip needed to remain objective to the time so he could continue on the mission, and that meant keeping his feet firmly planted on the Waverider, no matter if the way Jonah looked at him made him feel calm for the first time in months and as if he were engulfed in flames at the same time.

The apologies and pleas and desperate need to shout I _FAILED_ CALVERT died in his throat.

Jonah left with his team.

*

Three years later for him, Jonah Hex worked with the biggest bunch of misfits he thought he’d ever met, and almost lost his head when he saw Rip Hunter again.

Although he kept his face a mask, seeing the other man shook him; he sucked in a breath when Rip spoke, _something_ in his chest singing at the sight. Rip looked tired. It made him blink hard: another image of the man with hooded eyes and a weary expression crossing Jonah’s mind – then evaporating like a dream, out of the reach of his waking hands. It felt like he had been here before.

Then Rip spoke of Calvert, and Jonah reacted without thinking. The instant his knuckles slammed down on Rip’s cheeks, sending the other man sprawling, Jonah regretted it; yet as Rip stood and spoke, it was all Jonah could do not to cry, even with fists clenched at his sides. He felt desperately sad about that town, about Rip, about that confession – enough to provoke the response it had, to dampen his eyes with emotion he struggled to hold back –

Even after all these years, he had no idea why that was – and why, once a year, he rode through the remnants of what had been the town of Calvert. The tree had grown. What had been a sprout in the ground at the town’s burning was a sapling when he next returned, then a tree, now a landmark: it stood tall and evergreen among the destruction, somehow living alone in the desert despite no one tending to it.

Those roots must have stretched deep.

Jonah went with Rip’s new team to try and take-on the Stillwater Gang, and they lost the kid. In the haze of gunfire and smoke, he had known it was a losing battle, and in the back of his mind, always had.

 _You can’t beat the Stillwater Gang,_ a voice said in the back of his mind, _better men than you have tried, and failed._

Feeling the battle lost before it had even begun, he had called a retreat, pulling back. It wasn’t like him to run from a fight. Yet he did, for the memory of another blood-soaked battlefield and a burnt out shell of a town.

Three years later when Rip said he would be the one to take on Jeb Stillwater, Jonah felt his heart clench as he sharply sucked in a breath, eyes widening at the words. Desperately, insanely, he wanted to shout that Rip couldn’t do the shootout, that it wasn’t safe – a part of him even wanted to proclaim _himself_ as the gunman just to keep Rip out of the line of fire. But that was crazy. To die for a cause was worthy – but for someone he _barely knew_?

He couldn’t understand why it was only by biting the insides of his cheeks that he stopped himself from shouting out or stopping Rip. Jonah knew this was something the other man had to do, he could see it in Rip’s gaze, read it in the line of his jaw – Rip was doing this _for_ Calvert. For redemption.

Jonah hated it, he felt sick at the rapidly approaching noon shootout, but he respected Rip enough to hold his tongue, and let him make his stand.

*

Rip would be lying if he said that he didn’t feel like he was waking up after a long sleep when he stepped into Salvation.

In a way, he was dressed like usual – the coat was Jonah’s, and the gun was designed for this time – but the hat on his head was to fit in, and the weight of it on his brow left him fighting a smile. He had a gun at his hip, Jonah walking beside him into town, and was about to fight the ghost that had been haunting him for years – the Stillwater Gang. It was old business that might finally be laid to rest. For a moment, the sun in his eyes and the smell of dirt and sawdust filling his lungs, he almost felt like Sheriff Hunter again.

But that was a lifetime ago, and that man was dead. The man Rip had been when he walked into Calvert had not been the same one who left it; he was fundamentally changed, and was never the same afterwards. It was both a good and bad thing. Rip had been a lot of things in his life: orphan, time master, sheriff, father, captain. Each of these men took their time swaggering about in his shoes, then left as his life changed, the next part of him stepping in. He didn’t feel like a whole as much as the sum of his own parts, fragments of people he was or might have been, of futures that had changed or been stolen.

Now, the future facing him remained uncertain. All he knew was that he had to stop Savage. And after that? He didn’t know which man would carry on with life after his revenge. He wasn’t sure if he _had_ a life, when all this was done.

Maybe he would stay a captain. Maybe, if he could change time, he would be a father again. Maybe he wouldn’t be any of the men he had been before. Maybe he would finally find a way to bring harmony to his sense of self, and be _all_ of them.

 _Or_ , a thought lingered at the back of his mind, _maybe he can run away back to this place, in this time, and tell Jonah Hex that he still loved him_. Maybe the future he had lost could be found again.

“You alright?” Jonah asked, his heavy voice cutting through Rip’s thoughts. Just like that, the illusion faded.

Rip remembered why those happy memories had become sad memories: that Calvert was dust; he was no longer a Sheriff because he couldn’t stop the Stillwater Gang then and may not be able to now, and Jonah barely recognised him when he looked at him. Those eyes –

But when Rip glanced over at the words – _almost_ , there in Jonah’s gaze, there was concern . . . even though his face and words never did, Jonah’s eyes betrayed him. They glistened with worry and hurt almost _fighting_ with the rest of him, standing out brightly on his weathered face, just as they had back on the Waverider. If his memory had failed him, some part of Jonah remembered, and told his eyes to speak for him. Rip had to look away from them.

“I’m fine,” he replied more sharply than he intended. Rip grimaced. “I’m not concerned about the shootout. I’ll win. Today is not the day I fear the _Stillwater Gang_ . . .” he put as much venom into the name as he could, letting it sour on his lips and spill out of them in a tide of hatred. The face he pulled alongside it must have looked just as dark, for Jonah chuckled lightly at his side. Rip watched him for a moment. “Thank you for staying, Jonah. This was not your fight, you didn’t have to. I – I appreciate it.”

He almost winced at the way his voice caught, but forced his face to remain still. Rip had considered telling Jonah everything, trying to stimulate his memories and help them to resurface – but now was not the time. Rip would have to leave again, because stopping Savage was the only thing that could matter to him right now – to tell Jonah would be to stop running, because if Jonah remembered – if Jonah could forgive him, if such a miracle were possible – Rip didn’t think he had enough heart left to ever leave this place again and keep fighting.

So, he held his tongue and felt himself sink further into the casual despair that punctuated his thoughts since Vandal Savage tore his life apart. But Jonah had begun to talk, so Rip turned his attention back to his partner.

“You don’t have to thank me,” Jonah said coolly. There was something about the way he scanned the horizon that set off alarm bells in Rip’s head, but he had no time to place them before Jonah spoke again, watching Rip with the edges of his lips upturned. “There’s something . . . there’s something about you, Rip Hunter. Something important. I’m gonna find out what that is.”

Rip blanched, falling out of step with the other man for a moment. There was such conviction in Jonah’s tone, such absolute lack of doubt, that Rip’s insides twisted with guilt, the lingering nausea that had been rising since he saw his old love again hitting him once more in full strength. Jonah must remember _something_. At least, he thought he did, or felt it – enough to be sure there was something to uncover. The fact that Jonah even had to question it at all made Rip look away, tips of his ears turning pink. It was _his_ fault Jonah was searching for the truth, because he had taken the truth away from him, along with his memories.

But Jonah had noticed his reaction, and was now smiling vaguely. “Unless you’d like to save me the time, and jus’ tell me what the hell happened at Calvert?”

“You – we worked together, against the Stillwater Gang, and then we parted ways,” Rip forced himself to lie. _That is all_ echoed in his head, but he couldn’t bring himself to say it. “There is nothing important about me, nothing to ‘find out’-”

“Bullshit,” Jonah cursed, not looking at him. “You can talk all you like, Rip, an’ I still won’t believe it. Something happened at Calvert. I don’t know what, not yet – but I can feel it, _here_ ,” he tapped his chest, above his heart. The eyes that turned to look at Rip were full of an old, worn-in grief. “I feel it when I see you, like my body knows something my mind forgot, like it remembers. I . . . I could never really leave Calvert behind, like I did everywhere else. That’s why I know it’s special. It’s _different_. I go back every year.”

“You do?”

“On the date where I left, or as close as I can figure,” Jonah confirmed with a slight nod. “It’s like a graveyard still. And I feel for that town, which makes no sense – so I know. I _know_ something went down there. I need to know what.”

There was something pleading in the way his expression changed in the light. That wasn’t in his nature. But it was there, softening his features, a desperate yearning to place the truth to what he felt in his heart – Rip read his face in a moment. It wasn’t a thing easy to forget once memorised, how to read the face of the person you loved, so closely that words were not needed. And Rip knew Jonah now as well as he had then: Jonah was pleading for answers, haunted by phantom feelings of their time together.

He wished he could tell Jonah everything, could spill his guts there and then, but Rip shook his head.

“I can’t,” he said, but saw the hurt in the twitch of Jonah’s lips at that response. Rip stopped, seeing his team’s backs getting further away ahead of him, touching Jonah’s arm to get him to stop, too. Looking him dead in the eyes, Rip promised. “Not – not today. There is . . . there is a man, bigger than all of this, bigger than Calvert – and he’s going to hurt the _entire_ timeline – the entire universe - if _I_ don’t stop him. Right now, that _has_ to be my focus. But I promise – one day, I will come back. And I’ll tell you everything.”

Jonah was silent for a moment. Then, blinking, he looked back at Rip.

“That’s a lot to put on yourself, you know,” he said, “The entire _universe_. That’s gotta be quite a weight to carry, trying to save all of time. For one guy . . . what did he do?”

“Vandal Savage has burned cities to the ground . . . he has killed countless people, destroyed democracy, tore his way through the world-”

“And what did he do to _you_?”

Rip flinched, the memory still an open wound. “He killed my family.”

Jonah, to his credit, didn’t push that point or ask questions. Instead, he jumped straight to the heart of the matter, as deftly and simply and painlessly as he could. “Can you save them?”

“I _tried_ ,” Rip’s voice broke. “Countless times, I . . . couldn’t stop him, not alone. Maybe now . . . but saving my family alone was never the point. They – they died for nothing, if I let Savage continue on his rampage. I have to stop him, not to save them – but to save every other family in the timeline he could kill, for every other person who may stand in my shoes if I do not. I have to do it for all of them.”

“You feel a lot, don’t you, kid?”

And suddenly, it was too much. Being in Salvation, talking about his family, seeing Jonah again – Jonah calling him kid, like he had a decade ago – and Rip found his eyes wet with tears. Slowly, he turned to look over at Jonah.

“I feel everything.”

“When this is all over, and the time is right,” Jonah replied, placing a hand on Rip’s shoulder gently. “Come and find me. I’ll be ready to listen.”

*

Rip shot straight and true, and Jonah’s heart leapt to his throat at the sound of gunfire. But then through the smoke he saw Rip, standing tall, and he felt the grin forming on his lips before his mind even processed what he was seeing, relief flooding his veins. It was a high only those who thrived on danger knew – not the thrill of adventure, but the blood-pounding, heart-stopping relief of finding yourself alive when you had lost hope of surviving. It wracked his body as he sprung to action as chaos erupted around him.

Then Rip appeared again, at his shoulder, and he remembered only blurs of fighting after that.

In the middle of the action, being handed a gun by the other man, a smirk on Rip’s face, poking fun and joking and fighting, something clicked. _This_ felt right. Like it was supposed to be, like it had been before, like it would always be – standing at Rip’s side, fighting, Jonah felt the last three years vanish, like he was young again, with less bloody hands, and an inverted world had just righted itself.

The question of why he felt suddenly at home remained.

But in the moment, a cold gun in his hand and weaving around the fight, crossing paths with Rip fluidly, as if it were a fight they could do blind from practise, Jonah forgot all thought – he just felt. _Free_ , was the word that sprung instantly to mind to describe it, afterwards. Moving freely, moving without thought, fighting and laughing and shooting, he felt like he had been freed from some heavy burden he had been bearing all these years.

Rip looked how he felt, eyes alive in a way they had been dull, an unsharpened blade on the time ship, now precise and deadly, glinting in the firefight. His face relaxed into the fight, flattening out the worry lines in smirks and smiles, almost gleeful in his destruction. It seemed this was him, finally letting go – his team flew about them in ways that Jonah could only describe as miracles or abominations, but as they were saving Salvation, he tended to think of it as the former.

In the aftermath, the dust settled – this time, over a town that still stood.

As Jonah watched, Rip stood dumbfounded in the centre of Salvation, turning in a slow circle as his dark eyes flicked over the people and buildings, blinking heavily as if he half-expected them to vanish at any moment. His shock was clear, that they had won, but while for the rest of them it was a single fight, Jonah knew that years ago, Rip’s battle with the Stillwater Gang had begun in Calvert. It ended in Salvation, and Jonah couldn’t help but feel that this was important for him, too.

“I wish I could see what you see, Rip Hunter,” he breathed quietly, walking until he stood just a few feet away from the other man. At his words, Rip jumped. He looked at Jonah, paling slightly, the words having a greater effect than Jonah had intended, who confusedly amended, patting Rip on the back. “We _won_. Finally . . . why does it feel like it’s been a long time coming?”

“I . . .I wish I could explain, that . . . ” Rip tried to speak, but failed as Jonah walked, trailing off to stare again.

To see the way he was looking at the town, one would think Rip Hunter wasn’t a time traveller who should have seen much greater, more beautiful things than a ramshackle old town. But no, Rip looked around like all the wonder in the universe could be found there. Jonah felt the inexplicable urge to kiss him, but held back. It was a struggle.

“Salvation is saved, ‘though Calvert wasn’t. I think we can finally let it go – the guilt, at least,” Jonah murmured, joining in looking around. “I don’t want to let go of the rest. The feeling I get when I think of it - without thinkin’ of the end.” Rip winced at his words, so Jonah soothed, this being the opposite reaction than what he wanted. He reassured, “And I’ll still wait – I know this is important. I know this is a victory . . . but one hard won. But you need to stop your man, and I’ve waited years for answers – I can wait a little while longer for you to come back.”

Rip looked over then, but his expression remained unchanged, except now, Jonah was the object of his intense glare, the source of the wonder in Rip’s eyes. The Bounty Hunter’s ears turned pink.

“You’re still planting seeds and waiting for the rain,” Rip breathed, as if those words meant something. For a moment, his eyes flicked over Jonah’s face, over his lips and scar and eyes, and Jonah froze, thinking Rip was feeling the same way he was. But then his gaze turned longing as he stepped away. “I promise I will return and explain everything, my friend. You have my word.”

“Keep it,” Jonah cut him off. “I trust you. I don’t need promises. I know you’ll come back.”

“I _will_.”

“You better.”

Jonah grinned, and Rip cracked a tired smile. They stood side by side for a blissful few minutes, the town slowly coming out of their homes around them, seeing the Stillwater Gang gone and that they were safe. They began to applaud Rip’s team, and seeing the attention being given, Jonah glanced around.

“I better get going,” he said quietly, almost apologising for having to leave so quickly. “People are gonna start talkin’ about this. News’ll spread. And I’m still a wanted man in some parts – I better get gone before the story gets too big. You understand?”

“Of course,” Rip nodded, a little sadly. “I’ll walk you to your horse.”

Ten years after the first time, Jonah and Rip parted with ‘be well’ – except this time, it was hopeful. This time, it did not ring out dully with permanence – it was not goodbye forever, only for now. It held a promise that they would see one another again.

This time, as Rip Hunter watched Jonah Hex ride into the setting sun, he smiled.

*

A year later, Jonah Hex rode into Calvert.

His horse was tired from the ride and sweating, so he dismounted and walked through the crumbling town, stopping at a well to pull up a bucket of water and leading his mount by hand until he reached the field at the edge of the town. Jonah put the water by the animal and left it to graze, his own bones groaning in protest at the long hours riding, knowing his best bed for the night would be the grass at his feet. The prospect left him exhausted in advance of the fact. He felt _old_. He always did, coming back to Calvert. There was something about the place that had marked the end of something for him, and returning left him feeling all the years that had passed, bone-tired and drained in a way he did not feel anywhere else, his feet dragging as he made his way up the hill, towards the tree.

Ahead, he could make out the silhouette of the tree, dark against the setting sun, its leaves full and blooming, stretching out into the amber sky. It was a sight that never stopped short of taking his breath away. It took until he was only a few steps away for the tree to block the sunlight from his eyes for Jonah to see there was a person sitting at the foot of the tree, waiting for him. That _did_ stop him, standing a few paces from the tree in shock.

Rip Hunter was sitting among the roots of the great oak, hat on his head, one knee bent up, still wearing Jonah’s old coat. His eyes turned steadily to Jonah upon the Bounty Hunter’s arrival, but there was something so very tired in that gaze, and yet his lips were smiling, and that wasn’t a lie. As Jonah’s chest seized up, frozen, staring at Rip a few paces away, the tree watching over the both of them like some silent god, he wondered if all of time had lead to him taking those steps up the hill to this place. It certainly felt like time was marking them, paused with bated breath to see what happened next.

“You came.”

Jonah’s voice was hoarse from a day of hard riding through the dust, and came out of his throat in a strangled sound. Trying to clear his throat under his breath, he blinked once more in disbelief, walked over to the tree, and slumped into a sitting position beside Rip. Both of his legs stretching out in front of them, the sun on their back and the hollow ghost town of Calvert beyond the soles of his boots, looking like a graveyard, they sat in silence for a while.

Eventually, Jonah asked. “Your family?”

Rip shook his head. There was grief in the flash of emotion that shone in his iris’, the way his jaw clenched and set – it was raw and months old at the same time, but then, Jonah supposed losing your family was something you never really got over, not really. It was too big, too unthinkable – but like life, like time, you had to go on. Rip’s journey had led him here, evidentially, back to this little town they could not save.

He wondered if grief begot grief, and new loss made old wounds open anew. He hoped that was not the case. The last thing Jonah wanted in the world was to cause Rip more pain by coming here, even if that meant he spent the rest of his days wondering what had really happened to them in Calvert, and yet he knew Rip would not break his word. A part of him hoped that coming here was in fact a way of closing the book of Calvert; of making it so the both of them could let it go, put all the past to bed, as well as letting themselves move forward. Perhaps, he thought, doing this would _help_ Rip.

Peace was an idea to Jonah, a concept beyond reality, unattainable. But for a moment, he hoped it was real, if only so that it might do something to heal his old friend.

“Sometimes,” Rip began, his voice so soft Jonah almost missed it, stolen up by a passing breeze. It was too quiet, sitting up on that hilltop underneath the tree. The town below them lay dormant, silent – in his mind, a chorus of sound rose up, of voices and laughter and life, and a memory of standing with Rip to hear it – then as quickly as it had come, it wandered away. He was left in the dead quiet, only the gentle rustling of the trees ahead and their own breathing breaking the silence of the desert. “Sometimes . . . time _wants_ to happen. Things are set in stone. They cannot be changed, no – no matter how hard against them we fight. It is beyond us to control it, or change it.”

The clipped, forced way the words came out of his lips told Jonah this was something Rip had said many times before, rehearsed in their manner, but still his voice cracked and broke as he spoke. The other man had collected up a fistful of sand as he talked; eyes fixatedly on the town ahead of them, unmoving, unblinking. The sand spilled through his clenched fingers. Rip was a walking wound.

“My family – I could not save them. I _tried_. My team tried,” Rip gulped audibly, still rigidly refusing to give in to the weak cracks in his tone, to crumble completely. “It’s a terrible thing to say, but I think I knew all along that this would happen. I _hoped_ – god, I hoped I was wrong, but after trying by myself all those times, it started to look inevitable. Like this town, like Calvert – they were a fixed point in time. By the end, it was almost as if I was used to them being . . . gone. All I wanted then was an end.”

“-Rip,” Jonah cut in, reaching over to place a hand on the other man’s shoulder. He squeezed. “I’m sorry.”

The words sounded inadequate in his head, and even limper leaving his lips.

To Jonah’s surprise, Rip sagged under the touch, slumping and smiling tiredly. He broke his ten mile stare for the first time, blinking before turning his head towards Jonah, eyes cut with tears but clearing. It was a look of unflinching honestly, and left Jonah with the same feeling he got from looking directly at the sun.

“There was a moment, at the end,” he said, eyes never leaving Jonah’s, “Savage was dead. I had a bomb on the Waverider, and was flying it towards the sun . . . I thought it was the only way to save the world. I was _ready_ to die.” Although Jonah’s heart clenched tightly at the words, half-aware his hand on Rip’s shoulder did the same, his throat dry and scratchy instantly; holding his breath, Jonah never looked away. Rip almost smiled. “I – I saw them, there at the end. I know it’s crazy. I know it was probably all in my own head . . . but I saw them, and then I came back. I _lived_. Because some men would say the greatest shame is to outlive the people you love. I disagree – I think the biggest disgrace is to not use the life you’ve been given, the breaths you have left to take.”

Jonah nodded softly, “You live _for_ them.”

“I try,” Rip replied, relief that somebody understood flooding his face. “It’s been almost a year, since then. I know I should have come back sooner. But I needed,” he snorted, but it wasn’t a happy sound, almost irritated in the way he huffed the next word out of his mouth, “ _time_. And I wanted to be ready, when I saw you again.”

“Ready for what?”

“However you react,” Rip replied, face sombre again. “Whether you’re angry or hurt or sad, or – or if you hate me.”

“-I don’t understand what’s happening, not really,” Jonah interrupted, suddenly aware of just how long his hand had been on Rip’s shoulder. Awkwardly long. As if it burned, he let it go, but unblinkingly nodded at the other man. “But somehow I know – I can _feel_ – that there’s nothing you could do that could _ever_ make me hate you. No way.”

“You may not say that in a moment . . . I just-” Rip’s gaze was burning. There were shades to that look – fear, for sure. Worry. Guilt. Even, there at the edge of his eyes – a glimmer of hope. Mostly, Rip looked terrified and desperate, even as he spoke again. “I hope very much you will be able to forgive me some day, my friend.”

Finally, Rip looked away from Jonah, instead looking down as he pulled something from his pocket. From what Jonah could see, it was a small lump of metal, sitting in the palm of Rip’s hand, but he knew it must be more than it appeared from the reverent way the other man held the object.

It rested for a second in Rip’s palm, held ahead of him. The ex-Time Master’s dark eyes stared it down; his other hand moving towards it then pausing with uncertainty, hovering – closing his eyes in release, Rip closed the distance. His fingertips ghosted across the object as Jonah watched, slack-jawed, and at his touch, the object burst into life, light spilling out of intricately designed lines that had been invisible a moment before. Awoken, the metal gleamed with the lines, a round button appearing in its centre.

Rip opened his eyes. Turning, he held the object out to Jonah with shaking hands.

“This . . . this holds the memory of Calvert. _Your_ memories. Ten years ago, I took them, to keep you safe, and that was wrong. If you – if you choose to, pressing this button will restore these memories to you,” Rip reached over, placing the object in Jonah’s hands. Once the small cold weight was transferred, he closed Jonah’s hands around it, his own so warm in comparison to the device as he wrapped his hands around Jonah’s own. But Rip’s eyes didn’t look down; remaining close on Jonah’s, even closer now he had leaned forward to pass over the object. They were steady, yet still full of apprehension. “I kept them safe, all these years. Just in case I had the extraordinary good fortune to ever meet you again. I’ve carried this device in my pocket for a decade,” Rip blinked, shaking his head slightly, half a smile twitching the corners of his lips upwards. “It’s yours. They’re yours. It’s funny - I never realized how heavy that thing had been all these years.”

Jonah looked down at their entwined hands. In his own palm now, the device was light, only a few pounds, barely noticeable. But he understood what Rip meant anyways – for him, it was light, because it was opening a door for him that had stubbornly remained locked all these years. It was freedom from the questions that had been with him. For Rip – to carry that guilt around, it was heavy. It had a consequence.

His gaze found his way back to Rip, and Jonah’s stomach flipped.

Everything he had spent four years searching for, years half-feeling, lay in the palm of his hands. And suddenly he understood why Rip looked so scared, because he was, too. A choice was a hard thing to bear. A pressure indescribable pressed down on his limbs, tightening his chest and leaving him with tunnel vision, focused solely on their hands.

This was everything.

Jonah glanced back up at Rip. “Are you ready?”

“It should be me asking _you_ that, surely,” Rip said. The shake in his voice answered Jonah’s question. Despite it, he nodded briskly, talking quickly as if to fill the space between them. “I won’t leave. Whatever happens, I’ll be here still. You don’t have to do this alone.”

Jonah swallowed, finding himself nodding along. “Together?”

Rip met his eye. “Together.”

Opening their hands, Jonah’s thumb found the button, and Rip’s hand covered his own. They pressed down at the same time.

*

For a moment, nothing happened.

Quiet filled the air, the wind going dead around them so not even the tree overhead made a sound, each man holding his breath, the world stopped; charged with static and silence. It felt like the time before a storm rolls in, that deadly quiet, that eerie stillness, where the earth itself waited with bated breath for the rains to hit. Neither Jonah nor Rip even blinked, just staring into each other’s eyes, scared and hoping and –

With a cry of pain, Jonah flinched away. Hands going to his head, the bounty hunter fell back against the tree, groaning and eyes scrunching shut, breath coming in sudden gasps.

“Jonah?”

Rip reached out a hand, fingertips barely brushing Jonah’s shoulder before the other man’s eyes flew open. The pain drained away from his face. Jonah’s jaw unclenched, his brow fell to an expression of peace, and his eyes found Rip – and brightened. He _recognised_ Rip. The eyes that had clouded every time since the mind-wipe upon looking upon Rip grew sharp instead, and cleared.

“You can see me?” Rip breathed, desperately, barely daring to believe. “You know me?”

“ _Rip_.”

If looks could caress, Jonah’s did then, trailing over Rip’s face tenderly, eagerly, with wonder as if it were for the first time. The name left his lips, a prayer released into the world, and then he surged forwards and Rip fell into him, feeling the warmth of Jonah’s hand as it landed on the back of his neck, pulling him closer until their foreheads pitched together. He was aware for the first time that he was crying, warm tracks soaking his cheeks and breathing in shudders and gasps, the ache in his chest suggesting that he had been crying for a long time but it had escaped his notice, too lost in Jonah’s eyes to notice the weeping of his own.

Rip took in a sharp breath then, closing his eyes as Jonah held him close, half-rocking but keeping their heads together, feeling the soft puff of Jonah’s breath as it hit his face. From the way his breaths sounded as they hit, a hum low in Jonah’s throat the only sound, it was as strong a feeling for the other man as it was for Rip. He reached up, hands gathering themselves in Jonah’s long coat, gripping tightly, knuckles white, the thought that eventually he would have to let go a pool of worry in his gut.

“I’m sorry,” Rip gasped, quickly looking up until he could see the colour of Jonah’s eyes, and saw ten years worth of worry and anger and hurt shining back. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have – I should never have-”

“Stop,” Jonah said, his own voice barely steady, cutting off Rip’s hysteric apologies. The hand on the back of Rip’s head tightened. For a second, Jonah’s facade shattered: he may have stopped the hysterics, but he still wanted answers. “Why did you do this, Rip? Why did you – I would have _died_ for you! I would have _stayed_.”

Jonah was crying now, too. The tears weren’t Rip’s quick and heavy-falling sobs, but leaked instead from the corners of his eyes and ran down the slight lines at their sides. Slowly, they slid down his face, slowly, ringing with sorrow – and bitterness. His last words were shouted, the words ripping out of his throat raggedly, still kneeling in the sand.

At this, Jonah finally moved away. The absence of his touch as he stood left Rip feeling frozen, ice replacing the skin Jonah’s had warmed only a second before. Jonah stood, but Rip wouldn’t – couldn’t – let go of the grip of his coat, and stayed kneeling at Jonah’s feet even as the other man shakily raised himself.

Rip felt two inches tall.

“I know, I _know_ you would have,” Rip replied in a whisper, voice vanished. He was shaking his head, looking up at Jonah with stained-glass eyes; iris’ shining in a fractured light, reflected through tears, swirling with honesty and pain, determination and pleading. “That’s why I had to do this! They – they told me Calvert was _doomed_. That it couldn’t be changed – and I – I could save you, but I couldn’t save the town. I had that going round and round and round in my head for _weeks_ – and I couldn’t lose you. I _couldn’t_.”

“Lose me? You _left_ me! You took away a part of my _life_ , Rip!” Jonah shouted back, trying to pull away. Grip slackened, Jonah walked away, leaving Rip with hands in the sand, collapsed. He barely had the strength to pull himself up. Rip knew he deserved this and more, but unsteadily rose to his feet as Jonah turned back. “That wasn’t yours to take. You didn’t just take away my memories – you took away my _choice_! I would have stayed, to try and fight! We might have found a way-”

“There **_was_** no way!” Rip roared. Although he was shaking, not knowing how he was still standing with the way his chest ached from the convulsions that wracked it, he managed this last feat of defiance, eyes streaming. “You – you have to understand my life. I saw time. All of it. I have seen so much death, and chaos, and war and bloodshed. I’ve witnessed _massacres_. And I was told they had to be so . . . I trusted the Time Masters – and that was my mistake – but when they told me Calvert was doomed, I _believed_ them. God forgive me, I believed them,” Rip felt the energy drain from him, pooling at his feet beside his hope. “I . . . I didn’t want you to die for my mistake. Failing my mission, letting Moore live – it is what started all of this. It was _my_ failure, and I didn’t want you to die for it, because a world without you in it was not once that I ever wanted to see.”

“It was _our_ choice,” Jonah answered strongly, stepping back towards him. “ _Ours_! We did that – I thought – I thought you understood that I would see it through to the end, _with_ you!”

“I knew,” Rip confirmed, nodding. It was a sad motion, weighing heavily on his features. “I took your memories because I was told if you left, you would live. That you would live a long life, and I hoped – a happy one. But I knew you would never leave _me_. So I took your memories of us, and I intended to hand myself over to the Stillwater Gang, alone-”

Jonah swiped a hand over his tired eyes. “Rip, you fool! Why – _why_ would you face them alone?”

“It was all I could think to do. I couldn’t see you dead, I wouldn’t – but I couldn’t leave this town to be destroyed, either. I wanted to die for them,” Rip admitted, the memory still raw in his mind. It was the first time in his life he had expected to die for others – but not the last. He forced himself to turn his attention back to Jonah, expression strangely bright. “They chose to fight, Jonah. You would have been proud of them.”

“I _am_ ,” Jonah said, fierceness puffing up his chest but renewing the tears in his eyes. He looked towards the ghost town of Calvert, unable, it seemed, to look at Rip any longer. “What happened?”

“We were ready to fight. I left the front-line just before the battle to collect something from our room – this coat,” Rip tugged it, and felt his words taste like ash in his mouth. “Time Master Druce was waiting for me. He knocked me unconscious and took me away. By the time I woke up . . . it was gone. Calvert was just . . . gone. And there was nothing I could do – I couldn’t even return to bury the bodies-”

“I did that,” Jonah said quickly. Rip looked up sharply, confused, so Jonah shrugged. “You took my memories, but it’s like I said – I could _feel_ them still. I came back not long after, found the battlefield. I buried them here, underneath the tree.”

“I never knew that.”

“Yeah, well-” Jonah huffed grumpily, looking away. His hands, at his sides, were balled into fists. “You could take away my memories, but apparently you couldn’t take away the way I feel about you. You couldn’t make me forget entirely, because I still felt it, _here_ , for four _long_ years.”

Jonah tapped his heart again, and Rip froze.

“I’m sorry, Jonah. I _am_. And you don’t have to forgive me, I would never ask that of you – I will leave, if that is what you wish. You have your memories; have the truth now. If you never want to see me again, that is your decision,” voice rising and falling with the waves of memory and pain that crashed down over him, seeing the way Jonah’s cheek jumped at his words, twitching at the pain, Rip felt more terrible with every passing moment. He _wanted_ to make Jonah understand, but if it was causing the other man pain, Rip would swallow his own and let it die. “I did what I thought was right, but I was _selfish_ , I wanted you to live, and I took away your choice. That was wrong, I know that now. But I loved you too much to let you stay knowing your fate, and I would have died a thousand times before I letting you die once for my mistakes. I still would.”

When Jonah didn’t speak, Rip felt the last spark of hope within him die. With a bowed head, he added quietly, “I’ll leave. If this is my last chance to say it – I really am sorry, Jonah. Be well.”

Anchors for feet, Rip turned his back on Jonah and the tree, sand pulling the soles of his shoes down with every step away from him, back down the hill towards the dilapidated and burned town. Since Jonah had arrived, Rip’s body had gone into meltdown: his palms were slick with sweat from nerves as to how Jonah would react, his face clammy with worry, his heart beating an irregular dance caged in the ballroom of his ribs, alternating between speeding up at the sight of Jonah and barely pushed down hope, to completely stopping for a time, frozen between beats in panic and heartache. It was slow now, as he descended, a funeral march – his last words sounded like a door slamming shut.

Rip was at the bottom of the hill before Jonah spoke.

“Stop.”

The tone was low, resigned, but not angry any more. More than anything, Jonah sounded _tired_.

Slowly, hardly daring to believe it and heart once again picking up pace alarmingly, his own desperate hopes to be forgiven; to feel something real again taking control over Rip’s body, even as his mind went into a white noise overdrive trying to analyse the situation, the ex-Time Master turned on the spot. At the top of the hill, Jonah was looking down at him, body language completely changed from a deep anger, to slackened shoulders and loose hands, the last of the sun fading behind him, just dipping below the line of the hill. In that glance, however, Jonah was silhouetted in front of the tree, the burnt-orange sky leaching out light behind him, casting everything else into shadow.

He still looked like an old-fashioned hero to Rip, as if he had walked straight out of his dreams.

“Don’t leave again,” Jonah said, head shaking slightly. The way he stood changed before Rip’s eyes – he was not a hero, or a dream, or a fairytale. He was a man. He was a man Rip loved, and his hands shook at his sides, looking vulnerable in the half-light and pleading in his own way. “Please, just . . . just come sit.”

“If -”

“Stop offerin’ to leave, I don’t want that,” Jonah snapped, even as Rip began walking back towards him, almost eagerly. The steps back seemed lighter than the trudging away. In a single heartbeat, Rip was beside him once more. Jonah sat back down, landing heavily on the sand, this time a little further away from the looming oak. He nodded briskly at the space beside him. “ _Sit_.”

Rip sat.

Dumbstruck and not quite sure what to say – if there was anything left for him to say, any words that could make things right again, as if such a thing could be made right, Rip pulled his knees up halfway, wiping his damp palms across the fabric of his trousers. A little self-conscious, he shifted a few times, aware of Jonah’s stillness beside him, but waiting for the other man to speak. All around them, the light was dying. The sun had firmly disappeared behind them now, and the town ahead of them was dead, leaving not a light behind. Blinking, Rip’s eyes slowly adjusted to the dimness, Jonah’s breathing beside him locating him, as well as the heat from his body a few inches to Rip’s right, and the faint smell of leather. Even in complete darkness, Rip would know Jonah. He could find him in a blacker night than this.

Sunset turned to dusk turned to dimness turned to a blackness, and Jonah sat watching Calvert, until the town was almost imperceptible to the night around it. He said nothing. Eventually, Rip’s breathing settled into pace with Jonah’s steady breaths, the coolness of the night itching at his skin, heart slowing to a quiet rhythm, until he finally felt calm. Rip almost felt like he was no longer himself, after what felt like hours, half-numb as if he were floating above them both, witnessing from above rather than being a part of the moment.

It was crazy, but even after a decade, it seemed he needed just that extra bit of time to put Calvert to rest; to breathe normally, be calm, and think without falling into the pit of intense feeling that had been his home for so long. He didn’t know what he had done to deserve Jonah, who he was sure needed to think himself, too, but waited until Rip was fully calm before speaking into the darkness.

“I _want_ to be angry at you,” Jonah said quietly, the words a dull knife in Rip’s gut, although he maintained his composure, not reacting. It was Jonah’s turn to talk; he would listen. “I _am_. What you did . . . but I’ve spent the last four years wanderin’ about on my own. I – I don’t want to be alone anymore. I want to be angry . . . but it’s been too long. Calvert is gone. It has been for years – Christ, we’re old now, Rip. We ain’t who were were when we were here.” Rip nodded in agreement, but said nothing. Jonah had huffed a strange laugh at the realisation at how much they had aged in a decade, the evidence on both of their faces and lives just what a toll those years had taken. “It’s done and buried, and all I want is to be able to finally move on from what happened here. I think I can now.”

“I understand,” Rip replied, swallowing the lump in his throat. Jonah was right, of course. He had every reason to hate Rip and never want to see him again, to move on after years without his memories. Although it hurt, carving a hole in his chest, he forced himself to nod along.

“-No, you don’t,” Jonah cut in quickly, seemingly recognising the self-hatred in Rip’s tone. In the darkness, a hand found his own. The heat registered first, tentatively brushing over Rip’s palm in the sand, who understood the movement and turned it over, Jonah’s hand slipping into his own a moment later. It still fit perfectly. Silence lingered, then Jonah squeezed and spoke, “What happened; happened. I did my time carrying the grief of that around . . . and I think you did, too. I believe that you’re sorry. An’ I forgive you.” In the quiet Rip’s little gasp of relief sounded louder than it was, the shudder of his shoulders as he let go of a breath he didn’t know he was holding almost visible just by the sound. “I don’t want to spend any more time alone and feeling guilty for this town. We _tried_. They knew that – I hope they knew that, anyway. I want to move on and now I remember . . . I don’t want to miss you anymore, Rip. Because I did.”

“I missed you too,” Rip replied, leaning closer to Jonah by instinct. “ _So_ much. I thought about you so often, I almost came back to find you half a dozen times over the years, to apologise and try to make amends-”

“And now you _have_ ,” Jonah said firmly. There was the faint brush of breath against Rip’s face, although he had no idea how close or far away Jonah was in the darkness. “You carry around a lot, Rip. I’ve seen it. All those ghosts and regrets . . . I don’t wanna be one of ‘em.” He paused for a moment, and Jonah’s voice was almost hesitant when he spoke again. “I _love_ you. I have spent the last four years loving you, although I didn’t know it. So if you need more time – your family – I can give you that. I can wait-”

“No,” said Rip, and was surprised at how strong his voice sounded. Most of the time, he felt broken in some way. Although he hid it the best he could, behind bravado and the mission and his mask of authority, he had spent the last year trying to place together who he was now. He thought he knew, finally. “It’s been two years, almost. I still – I still think about them every day. But it’s like Calvert . . . time heals as well as hurts. It’s crazy, what I think I saw, but seeing them again . . . it freed me, Jonah, even if it was all in my head. I know they hadn’t died for nothing; I got to say goodbye, and that made all the difference in the world.”

“Rip, you shouldn’t-”

“I won’t forget them,” Rip barged on, needing to say it. “But I have a life left to live still. I have a mission. I _help_ people – I think they would be proud. And it’s like you said earlier: I live _for_ them. I live for today.”

“Live for today,” Jonah echoed in the quiet, and Rip could hear the smile edging on his lips. “I like that.”

Nerves welled up in his chest, pushing the air out, acutely aware that the next words would decide or destroy everything he hoped; Rip spoke, “And today, I don’t want to be alone anymore either. I would like it very much if you would join me. On the Waverider. As my partner in this mission, as you were before – and more. Like we were. Because Jonah - I still love you, too.”

There was a moment when neither of them moved or breathed. Then Rip heard Jonah’s wide smile break out on his face in a breath, and a moment later a pair of lips clashed clumsily into his own, hitting the corner in the darkness and leaving them both laughing silently, before Jonah grabbed his collars and pulled him close again. This time, the kiss found its mark. Rip breathed in Jonah, everything so familiar he moved with one foot in a memory and one in the present, knowing what to do as easily as it was for him to breath, not having to take any cues from Jonah – they remembered, and just moved perfectly in time with one another.

At the same time, Rip was aware of the new scruff on Jonah’s cheek rubbing against his skin, and the smell of leather and sand as they moved closer and closer together, his own hands moving to Jonah’s hips, one locking around the other man’s shoulder. In between moments of passion, they laughed and spoke quiet words of affirmation, neither bothered by the darkness anymore. They had each other. That was enough.

“So,” Rip said, stopping to catch his breath. Jonah’s head was angled against his own, resting, and there was a teasing smile on his face. “Is that a ‘yes’ to coming with me?”

Jonah’s reply surprised him. “On one condition.”

“Anything.”

“One day,” Jonah said, a hint of seriousness mixing with the grin of his voice, a clarity that warmed Rip’s heart. “One day, we come back here. To this time – the place, well, we’ll make that up as we go along, I suspect. As long as you love me, promise me that when the day comes we both know our work’s done, and we have done all we can, you’ll come back here with me and we will live. Because I know – I know it will be dangerous. I know there’s a risk. But I refuse to believe the only end to your mission is bloody, so I’m plannin’ for a future. _Our_ future, if you want it.”

Rip found he could barely speak.

“We could get a ranch,” he managed finally, the words stammering out of his mouth, his smile growing in the darkness as Jonah’s tender fingers rubbed back and forth on the line of his jaw. “Get some livestock. A few chickens. Horses.” He laughed, remembering the day a decade ago he had seen his first one. “They’re still so big. We could paint the house red and plant in the garden.”

“Another tree,” Jonah agreed. “Like this one. But this time we’ll both be there to see it grow.”

“I like the sound of that future,” Rip said softly. In truth, it was the first future in a long time he found that had an end that wasn’t dying on the job. To have one at all – especially with Jonah – it was a dream. “It doesn’t feel like a burden, not anymore. Not like it always had. If that is the future, then I wait for the day it gets here.”

“And I’ll wait with you,” Jonah said. In the darkness, they smiled, and then there were lips on Rip’s again and all thoughts were dispelled until later. Because dawn would come, and come again. Days would turn into weeks into months into years. Rip’s mission would continue, with his team – but now, he had Jonah at his side, too. He would smile a lot more. The years would stretch on, in kisses and arguments, fights and tears, laughter and singing and love.

And one day, they would plant a tree in their garden, and know finally that they were home.

**The End**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as promised, the epilogue! later and longer than expected purely because I wanted to get this fic in its entirety to 100 pages in a world document, if only to compete with myself as to what I can do. it ended up being 105, and thus what turned from a one shot into a small timehex novel ends. I've received some lovely feedback for this story, and I thank everyone who read and everyone who commented sincerely, it has meant the world. I rather like writing Rip and Jonah, so I wanted to give them a happy ending, after all of this. I hope it was enough.
> 
> Thank you dearly - Meg.


End file.
